Wordwatching

Wordwatching is a language-focused website by Lamont Antieau exploring the connections between language and culture. Dedicated to the study of language variation and change in American English, it gives particular attention to the American West, popular music lyrics, and social media. Through blog posts, lyric analyses, music video essays, and corpus-based investigations, Wordwatching examines how words and expressions vary across regions, time, and popular culture.

Its topics range from dialect features documented in the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle Rockies to vocabulary and themes in songs featured on Billboard’s year-end charts. Posts explore words such as “sunrise,” “beach,” and “moon,” as well as references to sports, places, and cultural traditions in popular music. The site also shares research updates, reviews of song lyrics, word searches, and video-based commentary.

Wordwatching offers an accessible window into linguistic research, using familiar language in music and everyday culture to illustrate patterns of variation and change. It is an independent scholarly blog rather than a commercial product or service provider