Joseph T. Farquharson

08/08/2026

I was honoured to have been invited last year to be part of this panel to discuss the theme "Will Dictionaries Exist in 2075?", at the 25th Biennial Meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America, hosted by Buffalo State University, and organised by Lisa Berglund. Although I was the prophet of doom on the panel, the exchange with fellow panelists was rich and provided the seeds for what became my presentation for the Richard Allsopp Memorial Lecture earlier in 2026. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/153/article/997314

08/08/2026

I am happy to announce the publication of the paper "Towards a Dictionary of Jamaican Slang", co-authored with my UWI colleague Byron M. Jones Jr. in the DSNA's journal Dictionaries, under the editorship of Lynne Murphy. Consider the paper a teaser for the dictionary itself which we hope will be ready in 2027.
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/153/article/997316

01/06/2026

On Thursday, 4 June 2026, my colleague Dr. Byron M. Jones Jr. and I will be doing our first public presentation on the work we have been engaged in over the past 3 years putting together the "Dictionary of Jamaican Slang". This talk will be delivered at a virtual meeting of the Helsinki Society for Historical Lexicography. If you would like to hear what we have been up to, you can register for the event by visiting this page

Events 4 June 2026 (see abstract): Our next lecture will be given by Dr Joseph T. Farquharson and Dr Byron M. Jones (The University of the West Indies, Mona) by Zoom on 4 June at 18:00 EEST. Everybody welcome! The title of the talk is: Bringing slang into the academy: Issues in the making of the Dic...

21/05/2026

The parliamentary rule that only English is allowed has reignited debate about language, legitimacy, and postcolonial identity

13/05/2026

28/01/2026

On Friday of this week, I will be delivering the 11th Annual Richard Allsopp Memorial Lecture. The lecture honours the rich legacy that Richard Allsopp has left to Caribbean lexicography. In my presentation, I will be looking at where lexicography is coming from and where the field is heading in light of current developments in technology.

17/12/2025

The Society for Caribbean Linguistics will be meeting in San Andrés, Colombia, 4-6 August 2026. Please plan on joining us. You can read the call for papers here and submit an abstract for the paper, poster, or panel.

Society for Caribbean Linguistics

27/10/2025

Jamaican Word of the Week (JWOW) is a feature of the Dictionary of the Jamaican Language (DJL) which is currently in preparation.📖 Find out more about the D...