Word 4 Word is a new programme about language - local language. It is part of the 大象传媒's Voices season that will run through 2005.听
With an expert panel in studio, Dermot Murnaghan will be talking live to different speech communities across the country. He wants to see whether what connects us socially - whether it's a passion for bingo, a love of skateboarding, your faith, your factory canteen... whatever - is as important as where you come from, when it comes to the way you speak. Read Dermot's own thoughts on the series.听
There's evidence that in our now intricately connected world, where mobiles and internet and textspeak allow all sorts of hookups that weren't even dreamed of fifteen years ago, we're changing the word-choices we make.
Word听4 Word is part of a major pan-大象传媒 project called 'Voices' that is developing an online dialect map of Britain, in conjunction with Leeds University's Survey of Regional English. 大象传媒 Local Radio are taking part later in the year, and dozens of fieldworkers are even now gathering recordings of local language in use, from Brixton to Belfast, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth. These recordings - of people using dialect, slang, trade terms with their mates - will provide for Word听4 Word the audio soundscapes of the way we're changing the speech we use from day to day.
If you don't think change is happening, go out and cop an earful of Northumbrian teenagers, say. They've probably lost the old 'Pitmatic' talk of the coalfields but have adopted a slangy voguish speech that's everything to do with being cool in the city; they'll perhaps be exhibiting some aspects of Hindi or Bengali too if they've got connections with the sub-continent - yet all expressed in the broadest Geordie.
Bestselling children's writer and poet Michael Rosen has written听a specially commissioned verse about the myriad forms our current vernacular takes. Follow this link to read the poem.
THE PRESENTER
Dermot Murnaghan has spent most of his career in broadcast journalism. Before joining the 大象传媒, he spent more than a decade fronting ITV's national news bulletins from London. He joined the 大象传媒 in the Autumn of 2002, becoming Breakfast's main presenter immediately Read Dermot's article on Word 4 Word
Bestselling children's writer and poet Michael Rosen has written听a specially commissioned verse about the myriad forms our current vernacular takes. 
Dermot Murnaghan has spent most of his career in broadcast journalism. Before joining the 大象传媒, he spent more than a decade fronting ITV's national news bulletins from London. He joined the 大象传媒 in the Autumn of 2002, becoming Breakfast's main presenter immediately