Linguistics Impact Case Studies
In REF2014 there were over 100 Impact Case Studies featuring Linguistics. The case studies are taken from REF Impact Case Studies and reproduced here under CC BY 4.0 licence permitted use. Here is a small sample:
Linguistics research for English Language teachers (QMUL)
UoA: Modern Languages & Linguistics
QMUL research into Multicultural London English (MLE) substantially contributes to the delivery of the GCE A level English Language curriculum and, since 2010, the GCSE English curriculum, which both have a compulsory focus on spoken English. MLE figures in 3 school textbooks and in a new QMUL online English Language Teaching Resources Archive that now receives 18 000 - 20 000 hits per month. The QMUL Resources Archive addresses difficulties in delivering the spoken English curriculum faced by teachers who are mainly trained in literature, not linguistics. Teachers and students benefit from new teaching resources including accurate linguistic commentaries on MLE sound clips and accessible summaries of linguistic research published in recent journals. The impact extends to the delivery of English Language curricula in EFL Colleges and HEI institutions worldwide, and to a wider public understanding of language change in London English.
Ecological Linguistics research and its impact on education for sustainability (Gloucestershire)
UoA: English Language and Literature
This case study highlights the pioneering research of Arran Stibbe in the emerging discipline of Ecological Linguistics, and the impact of this research beyond academia in developing Education for Sustainability in English disciplines and beyond. Environmental issues have traditionally been considered a matter more for the sciences than the humanities. However, Dr Stibbe's detailed linguistic analyses of environmental discourses, his many keynote presentations and newsletter articles for the Higher Education Academy, and the seminal Handbook of Sustainability Literacy have demonstrated how linguistics can address environmental issues, and informed the curricula of multiple institutions across the world, as evidenced by testimonials and the findings of independent research.
Linguistics research in Modern Languages and its impact in the community (Exeter)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Research in Modern Languages linguistics at Exeter explores language use and variation, especially in spoken varieties of French and Italian. It has impacted on educational practices (Impact 1), helped encourage social cohesion (Impact 2), and enhanced public appreciation of language (Impact 3). The French-based research has informed language learning in H.E. and schools, and featured in online training resources and the mass media. It features significantly on University courses (UK and abroad). Aspects of the research have contributed to shaping educational and policy initiatives in Italy and France, aimed at immigrant communities or designed to improve social cohesion.
Forensic Linguistics: Improving the delivery of Justice (Aston)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Research carried out at the Centre for Forensic Linguistics (CFL) at Aston has achieved the following significant impacts:
1.Casework: Reports for forensic investigations, and provision of opinion and evidence for police investigations, criminal trials and civil proceedings, have all contributed to verdicts of guilt or innocence and to judgements in civil and appeal Courts.
2.Policy development and training: Research findings have changed police practice in interviewing witnesses and suspects, and specifically in cases where there is an interpreted interview. Changes to Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) taking of non-native English speaker witness statements represents a significant, concrete example.
Language, Linguistics and Literature at school (Middlesex)
UoA: Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
This case study reports three specific kinds of impact: on the development of Key Stage 5 (AS and A level) curricula; on the practice of Key Stage 5 teachers; on the choices and interests of students (which in turn contributes to impact on curriculum design). Interventions through publications, workshops, committee membership and consultancy have helped to shape developments for many years. Key beneficiaries of this work are students, teachers, examiners and curriculum designers. The work has had particularly significant impact at Key Stage 5, although some of the activity is relevant at earlier stages.
Using Applied Linguistics research to improve Business English courses: Business Advantage (Birmingham)
UoA: English Language and Literature
The impact of the research is achieved via the creation, publication and adoption of a new 3-level Business English course, Business Advantage, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. Business Advantage is the first business textbook to draw extensively on research carried out on a corpus of recorded and transcribed professional interactions. As CUP's new `flagship' Business English course, it is being marketed internationally, and is designed to reach a large target audience of learners, teachers and programme directors.
The impact is primarily in two areas: education and economic prosperity. Education: research is informing and influencing the form and content of Business English teaching and is already of international reach in a range of educational settings, including tertiary, vocational and private (e.g. in-company training) in which English for Business and Professional Purposes is taught.
Economic prosperity: the impact involves transferring insights and knowledge gained from research to a commercial product — a mainstream Business English course by a major educational publisher with expectations, and initial evidence, of extensive world-wide sales to a wide range of customers.
Applying ‘plurilithic’ concepts of English… (York St John)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Dr Christopher Hall's research on second language (L2) lexical development stressed the hybrid nature of lexical mental representation in learners of English. This led him to reflect more critically on the local experiences and needs of learners and non-native users, and to develop a `plurilithic' account of the ontological ambiguity, unfairness, unhelpfulness, and unsustainability of monolithic conceptions of English for learning/teaching. Informed by this research, Hall (Reader in Applied Linguistics) and colleagues Dr Rachel Wicaksono (Head of the Department of Languages and Linguistics), and Clare Cunningham (formerly Wardman, an ECR and Lecturer in Linguistics) have taken steps to raise awareness of the implications of monolithic thinking among UK and international English Language Teaching (ELT) stakeholders, thereby challenging some firmly established tenets of language education policy.
From local dialects to global languages: supporting multilingualism in Northern Ireland (Ulster)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Linguistics at Ulster has:
1) influenced public policy and provision for Ulster Scots through appointment to The Ulster Scots Academy Implementation Group, planning for an Ulster Scots Academy and publication of Ulster Scots language resources
2) impacted on public values and discourse relating to local dialects with consequent effects on educational participation and practice
3) underpinned developments in policy and training in Irish-medium education
4) transformed the perspectives of communities and professionals adapting to the transition of Northern Ireland to a multicultural, multilingual society.
Academic, educational and commercial benefits of effective textual search and annotation (Birmingham City)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Based in the School of English, the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) conducts research in the field of corpus linguistics and develops innovative software tools to allow a wide range of external audiences to locate, annotate and use electronic data more effectively. This case study details work carried out by the RDUES team (Matt Gee, Andrew Kehoe, Antoinette Renouf) in building large-scale corpora of web texts, from which examples of language use have been extracted, analysed, and presented in a form suitable for teaching and research across and beyond HE, including collaboration with commercial partners
Documenting, preserving and sharing global Linguistic heritage (SOAS)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
There is a growing, global crisis of language endangerment: At least half of the world's 7,000 languages are under threat. The Endangered Languages Project at SOAS supports the multimedia documentation of as many endangered languages as possible, drawing on research in the new field of documentary linguistics. A component part of the project, the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) preserves and makes available through managed access 10 terabytes of material from 160 endangered languages projects to date. It has benefitted a broad, international user base including endangered language speakers and community members, language activists, poets and others.
Corpus research: its impact on industry (Lancaster)
UoA: English Language and Literature
UCREL (the University Research Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language) has been pioneering advances in corpus linguistics for over 40 years, providing users with corpora (collections of written or spoken material) and the software to exploit them. Drawing together 8 researchers from the Department of Linguistics and English Language and 1 from the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, it has enabled the UK English Language Teaching (ELT) industry to produce innovative materials which have helped the profitability and competitiveness of that industry, and assisted other, principally commercial, users to innovate in product design and development.
Language policy in London (Westminster)
UoA: English Language and Literature
The work of Professor Philip Baker on the multiple and diverse languages of London has influenced government data-gathering procedure and policy, has contributed to the engagement practices of several London NGOs concerned with racial diversity and bilingualism, and has positively contributed to education relating to multicultural London on teacher-training and medical education programmes.
Language policy: informing policy debate, public understanding, and education (Queen Mary)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Working in complementary areas of language policy and planning, the research of Oakes (French) and Pfalzgraf (German) has had three main non-academic beneficiaries. It has been of use to a wide range of policy makers in Canada and Germany, by informing debates on language policy at the official level. It has enhanced understanding of language-policy issues amongst the general public, through media interventions and works aimed at lay audiences. It has also benefited teachers and students in higher education in a range of disciplines and countries, by shaping their grasp of language-policy issues in Canada, Germany more generally.
Increasing awareness of a non-essentialist approach to intercultural communication (Canterbury Christ Church)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Holliday's research is at the core of paradigm change in intercultural communication. For this reason it has provided a conceptual underpinning for the design and writing of the new syllabus for English language teacher education proposed by the Chinese National Institute of Education Sciences. Holliday was invited to use his research to write the part of this syllabus which describes teacher knowledge and methodology necessary for recognising the cultural contribution of school students in learning English.
This research has also increased the intercultural awareness of English language educators in Asia and Central America through a range of seminars, workshops and internet material, and has produced a textbook which has carried this awareness to university students in the humanities and social sciences in a range of countries.
Promoting recognition and status of the Romani language (Manchester)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
This research by Professor Yaron Matras produced tools to promote awareness of the Romani language through popular websites, online documentation, learning resources and audio-visual educational materials. It also produced policy papers which prompted the launch of a European Language Curriculum Framework for Romani. This led to the consistent monitoring and reporting by governments on policy to promote Romani through the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Professor Matras was responsible for establishing the first-ever online multi-dialectal dictionary in any language. `Romlex currently offers an online lexical database of 25 Romani dialects with search and translation facilities in 14 different target languages.
Separated by a common language: changing understanding of language origins and use through public engagement (Sussex)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Research on lexis, semantics and pragmatics underpins a public engagement that allows ordinary English users to learn about and discuss national varieties of English. Lynne Murphy's online forums and live events accessibly examine how American English and British English suffer transatlantic misconceptions about their origins, use and interactions. This creates a public discourse (involving learners, teachers, translators, editors, expatriates) on how linguistic research illuminates the dialectal differences and on-going linguistic changes that puzzle or frustrate. People enter these forums because they are curious or uncomfortable about linguistic variation; they leave with their assumptions challenged and their prejudices altered.
Policy and practice of complementary schools for multilingual, transnational and minority ethnic children (Birkbeck)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Building on the well-established focus on multilingualism in Birkbeck's Department of Applied Linguistics, Professor Li Wei's ESRC funded research on `codeswitching' practices of transnational and minority ethnic children in complementary schools in the UK has had significant and far reaching impacts in the field of multilingual education. It has increased awareness of the social, educational and linguistic significance of complementary schools; enhanced interactions across complementary schools in different ethnic communities, and influenced policies and practices, including teacher development, within heritage/community language schools in Europe and beyond and bilingual education policies in China.
Raising awareness of adolescent health communication (Nottingham)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Research on the language of teenage health communication by staff from the School of English at the University of Nottingham has:
Raised health professionals' awareness and understanding of the language used by teenagers to discuss sensitive issues and helped to normalise adolescent health concerns
Helped to inform (local and national) government strategy for young people, and health education materials for children and their parents
Influenced changes in health practice through aiding the continuous professional development of healthcare professionals.
Preserving a linguistic heritage: Biak, an endangered Austronesian language (Oxford)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Biak (West Papua, Indonesia) is an endangered language with no previously established orthography. Dalrymple and Mofu's ESRC-supported project created the first on-line database of digital audio and video Biak texts with linguistically analysed transcriptions and translations (one of the first ever for an endangered language), making these materials available for future generations and aiding the sustainability of the language. Biak school-children can now use educational materials, including dictionaries, based on project resources. The project also trained local researchers in best practice in language documentation, enabling others to replicate these methods and empowering local communities to save their own endangered languages.
Public understanding of artificial intelligence (Aberdeen)
UoA: Computer Science and Informatics
Computational Linguistics research at Aberdeen concentrates on Natural Language Generation (NLG), an area of Artificial Intelligence. NLG raises difficult issues about what makes a text effective. This case study explains how our Computing Science department has brought these issues to the general public, aiming to improve public understanding of, and enthusiasm for, Artificial Intelligence. This has been achieved through two projects, targeting different sections of the public. The Joking Computer project explains the mechanisms behind verbal humour, allowing non-scientists to engage with computer programs that generate puns. The online Joking Computer has received 200,000 hits, and allows users to contribute data to the research by rating its jokes. The second project targets a more sophisticated section of the public in a book entitled Not Exactly: in Praise of Vagueness. This book, which builds on years of research on Natural Language Generation, illuminates the role of vagueness in science and computing and has triggered worldwide debate on the role of precision in scientific, social, and political discourse, meeting with an enthusiastic reception. To date it has sold well over 6,000 copies.
In REF2014 there were over 100 Impact Case Studies featuring Linguistics. The case studies are taken from REF Impact Case Studies and reproduced here under CC BY 4.0 licence permitted use. Here is a small sample:
Linguistics research for English Language teachers (QMUL)
UoA: Modern Languages & Linguistics
QMUL research into Multicultural London English (MLE) substantially contributes to the delivery of the GCE A level English Language curriculum and, since 2010, the GCSE English curriculum, which both have a compulsory focus on spoken English. MLE figures in 3 school textbooks and in a new QMUL online English Language Teaching Resources Archive that now receives 18 000 - 20 000 hits per month. The QMUL Resources Archive addresses difficulties in delivering the spoken English curriculum faced by teachers who are mainly trained in literature, not linguistics. Teachers and students benefit from new teaching resources including accurate linguistic commentaries on MLE sound clips and accessible summaries of linguistic research published in recent journals. The impact extends to the delivery of English Language curricula in EFL Colleges and HEI institutions worldwide, and to a wider public understanding of language change in London English.
Ecological Linguistics research and its impact on education for sustainability (Gloucestershire)
UoA: English Language and Literature
This case study highlights the pioneering research of Arran Stibbe in the emerging discipline of Ecological Linguistics, and the impact of this research beyond academia in developing Education for Sustainability in English disciplines and beyond. Environmental issues have traditionally been considered a matter more for the sciences than the humanities. However, Dr Stibbe's detailed linguistic analyses of environmental discourses, his many keynote presentations and newsletter articles for the Higher Education Academy, and the seminal Handbook of Sustainability Literacy have demonstrated how linguistics can address environmental issues, and informed the curricula of multiple institutions across the world, as evidenced by testimonials and the findings of independent research.
Linguistics research in Modern Languages and its impact in the community (Exeter)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Research in Modern Languages linguistics at Exeter explores language use and variation, especially in spoken varieties of French and Italian. It has impacted on educational practices (Impact 1), helped encourage social cohesion (Impact 2), and enhanced public appreciation of language (Impact 3). The French-based research has informed language learning in H.E. and schools, and featured in online training resources and the mass media. It features significantly on University courses (UK and abroad). Aspects of the research have contributed to shaping educational and policy initiatives in Italy and France, aimed at immigrant communities or designed to improve social cohesion.
Forensic Linguistics: Improving the delivery of Justice (Aston)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Research carried out at the Centre for Forensic Linguistics (CFL) at Aston has achieved the following significant impacts:
1.Casework: Reports for forensic investigations, and provision of opinion and evidence for police investigations, criminal trials and civil proceedings, have all contributed to verdicts of guilt or innocence and to judgements in civil and appeal Courts.
2.Policy development and training: Research findings have changed police practice in interviewing witnesses and suspects, and specifically in cases where there is an interpreted interview. Changes to Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) taking of non-native English speaker witness statements represents a significant, concrete example.
Language, Linguistics and Literature at school (Middlesex)
UoA: Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
This case study reports three specific kinds of impact: on the development of Key Stage 5 (AS and A level) curricula; on the practice of Key Stage 5 teachers; on the choices and interests of students (which in turn contributes to impact on curriculum design). Interventions through publications, workshops, committee membership and consultancy have helped to shape developments for many years. Key beneficiaries of this work are students, teachers, examiners and curriculum designers. The work has had particularly significant impact at Key Stage 5, although some of the activity is relevant at earlier stages.
Using Applied Linguistics research to improve Business English courses: Business Advantage (Birmingham)
UoA: English Language and Literature
The impact of the research is achieved via the creation, publication and adoption of a new 3-level Business English course, Business Advantage, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. Business Advantage is the first business textbook to draw extensively on research carried out on a corpus of recorded and transcribed professional interactions. As CUP's new `flagship' Business English course, it is being marketed internationally, and is designed to reach a large target audience of learners, teachers and programme directors.
The impact is primarily in two areas: education and economic prosperity. Education: research is informing and influencing the form and content of Business English teaching and is already of international reach in a range of educational settings, including tertiary, vocational and private (e.g. in-company training) in which English for Business and Professional Purposes is taught.
Economic prosperity: the impact involves transferring insights and knowledge gained from research to a commercial product — a mainstream Business English course by a major educational publisher with expectations, and initial evidence, of extensive world-wide sales to a wide range of customers.
Applying ‘plurilithic’ concepts of English… (York St John)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Dr Christopher Hall's research on second language (L2) lexical development stressed the hybrid nature of lexical mental representation in learners of English. This led him to reflect more critically on the local experiences and needs of learners and non-native users, and to develop a `plurilithic' account of the ontological ambiguity, unfairness, unhelpfulness, and unsustainability of monolithic conceptions of English for learning/teaching. Informed by this research, Hall (Reader in Applied Linguistics) and colleagues Dr Rachel Wicaksono (Head of the Department of Languages and Linguistics), and Clare Cunningham (formerly Wardman, an ECR and Lecturer in Linguistics) have taken steps to raise awareness of the implications of monolithic thinking among UK and international English Language Teaching (ELT) stakeholders, thereby challenging some firmly established tenets of language education policy.
From local dialects to global languages: supporting multilingualism in Northern Ireland (Ulster)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Linguistics at Ulster has:
1) influenced public policy and provision for Ulster Scots through appointment to The Ulster Scots Academy Implementation Group, planning for an Ulster Scots Academy and publication of Ulster Scots language resources
2) impacted on public values and discourse relating to local dialects with consequent effects on educational participation and practice
3) underpinned developments in policy and training in Irish-medium education
4) transformed the perspectives of communities and professionals adapting to the transition of Northern Ireland to a multicultural, multilingual society.
Academic, educational and commercial benefits of effective textual search and annotation (Birmingham City)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Based in the School of English, the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) conducts research in the field of corpus linguistics and develops innovative software tools to allow a wide range of external audiences to locate, annotate and use electronic data more effectively. This case study details work carried out by the RDUES team (Matt Gee, Andrew Kehoe, Antoinette Renouf) in building large-scale corpora of web texts, from which examples of language use have been extracted, analysed, and presented in a form suitable for teaching and research across and beyond HE, including collaboration with commercial partners
Documenting, preserving and sharing global Linguistic heritage (SOAS)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
There is a growing, global crisis of language endangerment: At least half of the world's 7,000 languages are under threat. The Endangered Languages Project at SOAS supports the multimedia documentation of as many endangered languages as possible, drawing on research in the new field of documentary linguistics. A component part of the project, the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) preserves and makes available through managed access 10 terabytes of material from 160 endangered languages projects to date. It has benefitted a broad, international user base including endangered language speakers and community members, language activists, poets and others.
Corpus research: its impact on industry (Lancaster)
UoA: English Language and Literature
UCREL (the University Research Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language) has been pioneering advances in corpus linguistics for over 40 years, providing users with corpora (collections of written or spoken material) and the software to exploit them. Drawing together 8 researchers from the Department of Linguistics and English Language and 1 from the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, it has enabled the UK English Language Teaching (ELT) industry to produce innovative materials which have helped the profitability and competitiveness of that industry, and assisted other, principally commercial, users to innovate in product design and development.
Language policy in London (Westminster)
UoA: English Language and Literature
The work of Professor Philip Baker on the multiple and diverse languages of London has influenced government data-gathering procedure and policy, has contributed to the engagement practices of several London NGOs concerned with racial diversity and bilingualism, and has positively contributed to education relating to multicultural London on teacher-training and medical education programmes.
Language policy: informing policy debate, public understanding, and education (Queen Mary)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Working in complementary areas of language policy and planning, the research of Oakes (French) and Pfalzgraf (German) has had three main non-academic beneficiaries. It has been of use to a wide range of policy makers in Canada and Germany, by informing debates on language policy at the official level. It has enhanced understanding of language-policy issues amongst the general public, through media interventions and works aimed at lay audiences. It has also benefited teachers and students in higher education in a range of disciplines and countries, by shaping their grasp of language-policy issues in Canada, Germany more generally.
Increasing awareness of a non-essentialist approach to intercultural communication (Canterbury Christ Church)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Holliday's research is at the core of paradigm change in intercultural communication. For this reason it has provided a conceptual underpinning for the design and writing of the new syllabus for English language teacher education proposed by the Chinese National Institute of Education Sciences. Holliday was invited to use his research to write the part of this syllabus which describes teacher knowledge and methodology necessary for recognising the cultural contribution of school students in learning English.
This research has also increased the intercultural awareness of English language educators in Asia and Central America through a range of seminars, workshops and internet material, and has produced a textbook which has carried this awareness to university students in the humanities and social sciences in a range of countries.
Promoting recognition and status of the Romani language (Manchester)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
This research by Professor Yaron Matras produced tools to promote awareness of the Romani language through popular websites, online documentation, learning resources and audio-visual educational materials. It also produced policy papers which prompted the launch of a European Language Curriculum Framework for Romani. This led to the consistent monitoring and reporting by governments on policy to promote Romani through the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Professor Matras was responsible for establishing the first-ever online multi-dialectal dictionary in any language. `Romlex currently offers an online lexical database of 25 Romani dialects with search and translation facilities in 14 different target languages.
Separated by a common language: changing understanding of language origins and use through public engagement (Sussex)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Research on lexis, semantics and pragmatics underpins a public engagement that allows ordinary English users to learn about and discuss national varieties of English. Lynne Murphy's online forums and live events accessibly examine how American English and British English suffer transatlantic misconceptions about their origins, use and interactions. This creates a public discourse (involving learners, teachers, translators, editors, expatriates) on how linguistic research illuminates the dialectal differences and on-going linguistic changes that puzzle or frustrate. People enter these forums because they are curious or uncomfortable about linguistic variation; they leave with their assumptions challenged and their prejudices altered.
Policy and practice of complementary schools for multilingual, transnational and minority ethnic children (Birkbeck)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Building on the well-established focus on multilingualism in Birkbeck's Department of Applied Linguistics, Professor Li Wei's ESRC funded research on `codeswitching' practices of transnational and minority ethnic children in complementary schools in the UK has had significant and far reaching impacts in the field of multilingual education. It has increased awareness of the social, educational and linguistic significance of complementary schools; enhanced interactions across complementary schools in different ethnic communities, and influenced policies and practices, including teacher development, within heritage/community language schools in Europe and beyond and bilingual education policies in China.
Raising awareness of adolescent health communication (Nottingham)
UoA: English Language and Literature
Research on the language of teenage health communication by staff from the School of English at the University of Nottingham has:
Raised health professionals' awareness and understanding of the language used by teenagers to discuss sensitive issues and helped to normalise adolescent health concerns
Helped to inform (local and national) government strategy for young people, and health education materials for children and their parents
Influenced changes in health practice through aiding the continuous professional development of healthcare professionals.
Preserving a linguistic heritage: Biak, an endangered Austronesian language (Oxford)
UoA: Modern Languages and Linguistics
Biak (West Papua, Indonesia) is an endangered language with no previously established orthography. Dalrymple and Mofu's ESRC-supported project created the first on-line database of digital audio and video Biak texts with linguistically analysed transcriptions and translations (one of the first ever for an endangered language), making these materials available for future generations and aiding the sustainability of the language. Biak school-children can now use educational materials, including dictionaries, based on project resources. The project also trained local researchers in best practice in language documentation, enabling others to replicate these methods and empowering local communities to save their own endangered languages.
Public understanding of artificial intelligence (Aberdeen)
UoA: Computer Science and Informatics
Computational Linguistics research at Aberdeen concentrates on Natural Language Generation (NLG), an area of Artificial Intelligence. NLG raises difficult issues about what makes a text effective. This case study explains how our Computing Science department has brought these issues to the general public, aiming to improve public understanding of, and enthusiasm for, Artificial Intelligence. This has been achieved through two projects, targeting different sections of the public. The Joking Computer project explains the mechanisms behind verbal humour, allowing non-scientists to engage with computer programs that generate puns. The online Joking Computer has received 200,000 hits, and allows users to contribute data to the research by rating its jokes. The second project targets a more sophisticated section of the public in a book entitled Not Exactly: in Praise of Vagueness. This book, which builds on years of research on Natural Language Generation, illuminates the role of vagueness in science and computing and has triggered worldwide debate on the role of precision in scientific, social, and political discourse, meeting with an enthusiastic reception. To date it has sold well over 6,000 copies.