Tony Thorne

Tony Thorne (born 1950 in Cairo, Egypt) is a British author, linguist and lexicographer specialising in slang, jargon and cultural history. He is a leading authority on language change and language usage in the UK and across the anglosphere.

Thorne attended Hampton School and the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Thorne’s Dictionary of Contemporary Slang,[1] published by Bloomsbury in February 2014, remains one of the only treatments of the subject to be based on examples of authentic speech rather than purely upon written or broadcast sources, while Shoot the Puppy, a survey of the latest buzzwords and jargon, drew upon his inside experience of corporate life while working as a communications consultant for multinationals, NGOs and business schools.[2] His 100 Words That Make the English, published by Abacus in April 2011, consists of essays on one hundred key words that are most emblematic of English identity in the 20th and 21st centuries.[3]

After explorations in Central and Eastern Europe following the fall of communism and the opening of lost archives, Tony Thorne published the definitive English-language biography of the 16th century Hungarian Countess Erzsebet Bathory, reputed to be a mass murderer who bathed in the blood of her victims.[4] His Children of the Night is a comprehensive account of the historical origins of the vampire myth as well as its subsequent representations in literature and popular culture. The book additionally examines contemporary vampire culture through interviews with self-styled ‘living vampires’.

Thorne has also written a life of the 18th century French waxworker, Madame Tussaud, for children, and writes on outsider and visionary art.[5]

From 1991 to 2007 he was Director of the Language Centre at King's College London where he is now Visiting Consultant. He founded and oversees the Slang and New Language Archive at King’s, a library and database resource recording language change and tracking linguistic controversies.

He has written and presented programmes on language and popular culture for BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, and is a regular contributor to media discussions of language controversies,[6] communication technologies and lifestyle innovations. He contributed the ‘Yoofspeak’ column to the Times Educational Supplement and writes the 'Bizword' column in British Airway's Business Life magazine.

Works

Contributor

References

  1. ↑ Roland White, Education: If you want to talk slang, you’ll need this phat guide, Sunday Times, 17 July 2005
  2. ↑ William Leith, Shoot the puppy (meaning: dare to do the unthinkable), Daily Telegraph, 13 Aug 2006
  3. ↑ Lynne Truss, Jolly Wicked Actually, Sunday Times, August 23 2009
  4. ↑ George Szirtes, Vampire Goes West, Times Literary Supplement, 27 June 1997.
  5. ↑ Wounds that bleed eternally, Raw Vision 32
  6. ↑ Mind Your Slanguage

External links

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