Paul Baker

I'm a northerner, originally from Peterlee in County Durham. I work as a Professor of English Language at Lancaster University and divide my time between Lancaster and London. I'm interested in social history and did a PhD looking at a secret form of language called Polari used by gay men, and made popular in the 1960s radio comedy show Round the Horne. I've also written books on gay men who worked in the merchant navy, the history of camp and the story of Section 28. My academic work usually involves corpus linguistics, a way of using computers to help make sense of trends and patterns in large collections of texts. I've used this approach to analyse a diverse range of texts including newspaper articles, patient feedback, tv sitcom scripts, political debates, personal adverts. I've also used the approach to look at how language is changing over time and how British English compares to American English. When I'm not working, I like going to the BFI to watch old movies, playing the piano and walking around London and other cities.