Exploring real-world
issues through the power
of language

Keynote speaker / Linguist / Communicator / Social Commentator 

Personalised keynotes

Communicate ideas, raise awareness, challenge existing narratives, foster understanding, evoke emotions, spark meaningful conversations, and inspire change.

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Business Insights

Rethink how you achieve influence, buy-in, authority, and impact. Advice and guidance for CEOs, boards, and executives.

Brand is the part of identity you want to promote

Your brand is not who you are. Identity is who you are. Brand is a subset of your identity. Your brand is the bits of your identity that you want to share with the world. It's how you want to be seen. If your brand and identity are out of alignment, it’s an organisational disaster waiting to happen.

Ask yourself six simple questions

At its core, identity is found in the answers to very simple questions like what do you do? and what’s your value? You’d think we’d be really good at answering fundamental questions like these, but most of us struggle to make small talk at a barbeque, let alone define our organisation’s identity.

The value of a 'vision' is in binding successive strategies together

Most organisations get their 'vision' and 'purpose' wrong. A vision only has value in terms of strategy - it helps to bind successive strategies together, so that you stay on track to achieve that vision. It's the same with your purpose. No organisation or person has one single purpose that drives them. Life is more complicated than that.

Social Commentary

Examine how language reflects and influences social dynamics, power structures, and cultural values.

Featured
Why linguists work in AI

There are a lot of linguists working in AI because language plays a crucial role in communication and understanding between humans, and AI systems need to understand and generate language to communicate effectively with humans.

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“We the people…”

The United States Constitution is the oldest written constitution still in existence today. While being drafted, many changes were made to the words that we now know so well. Among the most important was a critical phrase in the very first line.

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Language as a weapon

In times of war, language can not only be used for propaganda purposes but also as a way of brutally expressing the conflict and the side you are on.

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Americans spell differently… here’s why

Noah Webster is known as the ‘Father of American scholarship and education’ and his name is synonymous with American dictionaries i.e. Merriam-Webster. One of his ideas was to simplify the spelling of English words and some of these alternative spellings caught on.

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Accountability vs Responsibility

Accountability and responsibility are clearly related terms - so much so that they are often used interchangeably. But, while they may be related, they are most definitely not the same thing and the differences are important.

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Let’s invent a new response

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads globally, it's worth remembering that the pandemic is not really the problem. Rather, it’s the inability of our health system to respond.

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Discover the
origins of words

Get insights into the history, culture, and evolution of words and how they shape the world.

We think we have a good handle on the meaning of 'nice'. But its 12th century Old French meaning (‘simple, stupid, foolish’) stems from the Latin nescius meaning "ignorant, unaware" - literally "not-knowing". Have a ni
In a time of FAKE NEWS, it's pertinent to ask: what does NEWS actually mean? Some mistakenly believe it's an abbreviation of 'North East West South', as in 'information from all corners of the earth'. In reality, it is simply the plural of 'new' - li
The word ‘vaccine’ sounds suitably scientific. It’s actually latin for ‘pertaining to a cow’. The smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to be developed (1796). Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who previo
You think we’d have a pretty good handle on the meaning of a simple word such as ‘simple’, right? Wrong. Depending on the time period, you could have used it to describe someone as ‘sweet’, ‘stupid’, ‘s
Ironically, we don’t fully understand the origins of the word UNDERSTAND. This highlights our tendency to use words and concepts that we think are obvious, but which may not be clear to everyone - which only invites the audience to draw their o
A brand is simply your mark: a quick way of associating certain qualities with your product or organisation. It is, in old cowboy parlance, the mark on the backside of the cow. It ain’t the cow. Don’t mistake brand for identity. Download