English Language Studies

Linguist David Crystal predicts the loss of the period:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/period-full-stop-point-whatever-its-called-millennials-arent-using-it.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html

Is your image of a grammar pendant an elderly school marm? Well, a study by Robin Queen has shown that gender, age, and education play little role:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/grammar-pedant-personality-type?CMP=share_btn_tw

In a forthcoming book (Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, see http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/teen-talk-language-adolescents), Sali Tagliamonte of the University of Toronto, examines teen talk. She is interviewed in this article from the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-talk-book_us_56fc44dde4b0daf53aeea341
Note, however, that her etymology of posh is likely incorrect, see
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/02/what-is-the-origin-of-posh/
A similar folk etymology is the supposed origin of tip from “to insure proper service”.

An accent spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina is known as “Ocracoke Brogue”:
http://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/hoi-toider-ocracoke-brogue-in-north-carolina?iid=ob_homepage_NewsAndBuzz_pool&iref=obnetwork

This article argues that English punctuation is not fixed and unchanging:
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21694497-punctuation-has-rarely-been-truly-stable-dont-pnic

Linguists point to the syntactic problems with Facebook’s new icons:

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/linguists-not-exactly-wow-facebooks-new-reactions/

Because of changes in pronunciation, many of Shakespeare’s puns (including his ribald ones) are lost for modern audiences:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/loves-labours-found-saving-shakespeares-puns/471786/

Does speaking with a foreign accent have important consequences socially and economically? This article addresses this important question:
http://qz.com/624335/the-reason-you-discriminate-against-foreign-accents-starts-with-what-they-do-to-your-brain/