It's not what you say, it's how you say it

Michael Rosen on the linguistic comfort food of clichés, pragmatics and how we use language to connect us beyond the actual words used. Derek Bousfield explains how words do more than carry meaning: context governs what we say and how it’s understood. Dr Bousfield is Reader in Pragmatics and Communication and Co-Director of The Manchester Centre for Research in Linguistics and co-author of Talking in Clichés: The Use of Stock Phrases in Discourse and Communication. Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Beth O'Dea, in partnership with the Open University.

You can listen to It's not what you say, it's how you say it online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it is an episode from Word of Mouth by BBC.

This episode is 27:54 long.

This episode was published on Sep 25, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Word of Mouth when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.