Language Joyriding: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 16 November 1993

Jean Aitchison explains that the role of the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication is twofold: researching into key aspects of language, especially of the media, and educating future gatekeepers or `lock-keepers', those who will filter and transform incoming floods of
information.

Lock-keeper education involves promoting clear communication, computer skills, and knowledge of language, in the sense of knowing how it works. Media language is inventive and creative - but it can only push language along in the direction in which it is already going. Use of individual words
matters less than the context in which they are used, and metaphors can be all-powerful. These points are made with illustrations from some changing lexical items: Mini-, wimp, and joyriding.

Jean Aitchison, Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication, University of Oxford.