English Language Studies

http://www.vancouversun.com/Kwakwaka+wakw+songs+preserve+ancient+traditions/9777668/story.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/04/20/304585019/a-legume-with-many-names-the-story-of-goober

http://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/save-the-subjunctive-3/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/us/in-california-saving-a-language-that-predates-spanish-and-english.html

By John McWhorter

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/opinion/sunday/like-degrading-the-language-no-way.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/science/study-finds-literary-mood-reflects-previous-decades-economy.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/books/oeds-new-chief-editor-speaks-of-its-future.html?_r=0

A (semi-)serious article in the Mail Online discusses the possibility that cows have “regional dialects”:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401843/Cows-regional-accents-Pull-udder-one.html

This topic is very amusingly treated in a segment from the NPR podcast “How to Do Everything” (Dec. 31, 2013), where Sir Patrick Stewart comments on this phenomenon and performs various of the accents:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/30/258393176/make-it-so-sir-patrick-stewart-moos-in-udder-accents

The American Dialect Society, at its recent annual meeting, chose the prepositional use of “because” as its ‘Word of the Year’:
http://www.americandialect.org/because-is-the-2013-word-of-the-year
The Society considered other words, such as “twerk” and “selfie”.

It’s interesting to look at past ‘Words of the Year’. One realizes how changing and ephemeral the vocabulary can be (“plutoed”, 2006; “occupy”, 2011), whereas other words are likely here to stay (“google”, ‘Word of the Decad; “app”, 2010):
http://www.americandialect.org/woty

This blogger (Jules Sherred), not a professional linguist, has done quite a good job identifying a number of new Canadianisms (by using a survey questionnaire).
http://geekmom.com/2013/12/55-canadianisms/

Most all of these will appear in the forthcoming Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 2nd edition, forthcoming from the University of British Columbia Canadian English Lab:
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sdollinger/dchp2.htm