Dr Amanda Cole

Amanda’s research is on the politics and ideologies of language, accent bias, and language variation and change in varieties of English. Her work explores intersections between language and society: not just on how people speak, but on how they—and others—feel about it. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, she investigates how power, prestige, privilege, and prejudice are embedded within language. Her previous work has examined why some accents are valued while others are systematically penalised and how this intersects with social class, ethnicity, gender and region.

She is also interested in regional dialects of English across the UK and beyond, documenting and celebrating regional linguistic diversity. In particular, being born into a family of East Londoners in Essex, she has extensively researched Essex and London dialects, including Cockney, and its influence across South East England. She has particular expertise in English varieties in southern England.

Amanda is committed to making linguistic research accessible, for the public, the media, policy makers and schools. She regularly contributes to national and international media, including with the BBC, ITV, Channel 5, all major broadsheets, and leading radio outlets in the UK and worldwide. She has also written many accessible linguistic articles for The Conversation.

Along with Professor Rob Drummond of Manchester Metropolitan University she runs the Accentism Project, a project which champions accent equality and bridges the gap between academic research and public awareness through advocacy, research, consultancy, media work, public engagement and accent bias training.

She has also collaborated extensively with educational charity English and Media Centre, including co-authoring New Directions with Dan Clayton. This research and resource pack is designed for teachers and students of A Level English Language and aims to bring some of the most up to date research on linguistic variation to the classroom.

Amanda welcomes inquiries from potential PhD students with research interests in the sociolinguistics of English.

Her list of publications can be accessed here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cOkoxoUAAAAJ&hl=en