Michael Rosen explores how language has become an online commodity, with Dr Pip Thornton, Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Thornton explains, with the help of auction props and a receipt machine, what happens to the words that we put into an online search and how the engines make money from our words and phrases. We discover why William Wordsworth's daffodils and clouds have had their context 'stolen', how Lewis Carroll wrote an incredibly 'cheap' poem and why mesothelioma is the most 'expensive' word. Plus Michael proposes a new form of poetry - the Monetised School of Poetry.
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Ellie Richold
NHS language use
Lying
Metaphors
Anglo Saxon
The Language of Science
Gabriel Gbadamosi
Philosophy in English
Vikings
Glyn Maxwell
The most powerful word
The First Language
Raymond Antrobus
Romani
The Language of Comics
Jeffrey Boakye on black-related words
Biscuit Names
Listen and learn: how to make better conversation
Dyslexia
Talk of the Town: How Places Got Their Names
Solving crime with forensic linguistics
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