A Web Of Words

The Reith Lectures

• Episode: A Web Of Words
• Website: The Reith Lectures
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:29:12
• Published: 1996-02-27 10:00

This year's Reith Lecturer is Jean Aitchison, a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. In her fourth lecture, Professor Jean Aitchison examines words themselves. An educated native speaker of English knows at least 50,000 words and word-learning ability is inbuilt in humans. Professor Aitchison explains how we manage to recall these words at speed when we need them, and how meaning and sound are interwoven.