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In this chapter, I reflect on the impact my Estuary English accent has had on me, both personally and professionally as a former social worker, now social work academic, and the impact it appears to have on others. From parental chastisement for dropping my ‘T’s, attributions of being ‘Cockney’ and ‘Essex’, with associated assumptions made about my educational background, class and indeed my very moral character. My accent appears at times, to disrupt some peoples' presuppositions – about who or what I am. I discuss some of the linguistic features of my accent and some ‘critical accent incidents’. I reflect on the challenges of managing academia as someone with an accent that I argue, is underpinned by gendered and classist assumptions. I argue why a critical focus on accentism remains important, generally and within social work education. The chapter utilises theory from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural theory, linguistics, education studies and autoethnography.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an evidence-based environmental scanning model that will provide a methodological framework for conducting community-engaged and community-focused research, with a particular emphasis on northern communities in Canada.

The study has adopted a multifaceted environmental scanning approach to understand the Inuvialuit Settlement Region communities. The research design is informed by various environmental models as discussed in literature from a broad range of domains such as business, library and information science (LIS), and a sophisticated multimethod data gathering approach that included field trips, observations, surveys, as well as informal methods of community engagement.

The paper proposes an environmental scan model as a novel approach to community-focused digital library (DL) development. The paper identifies both macro- and micro-environmental landscapes as applicable to the development of a DL for communities in Canada’s North. The macro-environmental landscapes include: geographical, historical and sociocultural, political and regulatory, economic, technological, competition, and human resource. The micro-environmental landscapes include: stakeholder and community, linguistic, information resource, and ownership.

The environmental scanning model and its key components presented in this paper provide a novel and concrete example of a project that aims to organize information for increased access and to create value through the design and implementation of an infrastructure for a cultural heritage DL. The environmental scan model will also contribute to both research and practice in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), particularly in the area of DL development for rural, remote, and indigenous communities.

In a review of a Report on the Public Library System of London in the Summer, 1956, number (p. 419), I sought a picture of the London and Home Counties service and the factual details composing that picture. Every page of the Report baffled me, as I was bound to say most plainly, and library authorities' annual reports added little to my knowledge. It grieves me, a near‐cockney myself, that the libraries of Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol, to name a few provincial towns, should make so much more impact on the public than London and the southeast. Not that London authorities are wholly inactive. Staffs there play happily around with issue methods. In one borough Dickman, once puffed up, goes out in favour of old tried and trusted Browne. In another a token has been experimentally in play, and is to be kept but not recommended to other authorities; a county, on the other hand, cannot restrain its enthusiasm; while a cautious town tokens only fiction—all most confusing. South of the river an authority has tested, approved and intends to remain devoted to photo‐charging; another, north of the river, has tried and rejected it. London always has been hospitable to eccentricity in librarianship. The kindness continues. Has one of these charging systems been investigated and costed by business experts?

After Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, had sculpted and fallen in love with his perfect woman, Galatea, his repeated prayerful overtures to the gods were answered. Venus gave life to her. Some two thousand years later in Shaw's play Pygmalion, Henry Higgins turned a cockney flower girl into an elegant lady, although he relied on language rather than love.

With the launch of Asdadrive, Asda‐MFI, the third largest retailer in the UK, is to start selling cars. The news that Asda is to enter the motor trade, not only selling new cars but also dealing in servicing, repairs, trade‐ins and credit arrangements alongside their existing superstore operations is a perfect example of the daring and imaginative attitude which personifies “headline” retailers today; “jam‐jars” (Cockney rhyming slang for cars), beside jars of jam … whatever next! In fact this development of elastic product policies exactly mirrors another shift in traditional retail patterns — equally major but less trumpeted perhaps — the rapid growth in forecourt shops selling unconventional lines of merchandise. Our contributor looks at this relatively non‐publicised aspect of retailing, now pushed dramatically into the limelight.

Whenever people enter an interaction, listen to a briefing or read an article they unconsciously form opinions about the person or people initiating the communication and the nature and credibility of the communication itself. Based on these opinions, people form an attitude towards communicator and communication, and that attitude will dictate whether they believe what is being said, whether they trust the communicator's judgment, and whether they offer any feedback. More often than not these opinions are not based on the content of the message being delivered, nor on the types of channel it is being delivered through, or on any informed knowledge about the initiator. The opinions are based on other factors — the communicator's mannerisms, the way they look, and the kind of language they use. This paper will look at how such opinions are affected by the language used in communication. It will draw on a number of linguistic studies that illustrate this process in action and will demonstrate, through a case study, how manipulating this process can help to build more effective corporate communication.

Higher education (HE) in England and other parts of the United Kingdom (UK), traditionally and historically, has been dominated by privileged and powerful social groups. In recent decades, universities have opened their doors and encouraged participation by a diversity of learners including women, working class, minority ethnic groups and many others that might be deemed historically under-represented in HE. This movement came to be known as ‘widening participation’. I consider myself to be a product of the widening participation movement having returned to learn in 1994 after a 10-year break in education. However, providing access to participate is only the first step. For many HE students from under-represented groups, like the working class, the journey through the academy, while earning their degree, can be fraught with profound and difficult experiences. This chapter charts my own journey into HE as a student, and back into HE as an academic, with some equally fraught and profound experiences.

This chapter will examine the intersectionality of race, class and gender as defining my experience of being a Black, working-class woman in academia over a 30-year period in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2013) as the framework for positionality, early childhood experiences will be discussed along with my entry and journey in academia. My early experiences are important to document as they are influential in defining my working-class heritage. I will also discuss the importance of intersecting issues related to being a Black working-class woman such as my accent and the politics of my hair in the academy. There are unique challenges faced by Black working-class women, so I conclude with some personal tips for staying in academia.

This chapter examines patterns of neighbouring in the small Essex town of ‘Eastside’, located in London’s eastern suburban periphery. Drawing on qualitative interviews, two groups of resident interviewees are discussed: established, long-term, white British residents who have lived in Eastside for many years, and ethnically diverse newcomers who have recently moved to the area. This chapter focuses on patterns of neighbouring – both positive in the form of ‘neighbourliness’ and negative in terms of ‘unneighbourliness’ – and considers whether neighbouring provided the basis for residents to develop a sense of community. Basic neighbouring activities, such as saying ‘hello’ and the mutual provision of support, were commonplace, although proactive intervention and socialising with neighbours were more limited. Only a minority of both long-term and incoming interviewees identified a sense of community based upon neighbouring. The dominant aspect of the former’s sense of community was a ‘narrative of decline’ in which they lamented the loss of the more intense neighbourliness that they recalled from the past. Unneighbourliness was also evident, for example, in relation to noise, and various reasons for this are analysed including deficiencies within the physical environment, tenure prejudice, and established/newcomer resident tensions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way in which fiction written in English has portrayed establishments which provide accommodation and food: namely inns and hotels. This personal mental portrayal contributes to the image of hotels by readers of fiction and ultimately to hospitality and tourism buying behaviour.

The author reviews the increasing visibility of inns and hotels in fiction in the last 700 years and focuses upon six selected texts which the researcher considers important.

The paper offers some conclusions as to the way in which authors perceive the way in which inns and hotels operate: people, places, plots, products and principles.

There may be few direct practical implications which might follow immediately from this exploratory study. The paper seeks to explore some of ways in which the image of inns and hotels is expressed in fictional literature, so as to better understand and market hospitality and tourism products more effectively in future.

This is a topic which has, to date, been little, if ever, researched. Fiction is increasing in popularity and it has influenced the way in which readers think, feel and react. This paper addresses this gap and opens the field for more interdisciplinary research.