Jean Aitchison is the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow at Worcester College. In her research she is concerned with the mental lexicon, language change, and the language of the media. She has lectured in various parts of the world, including the USA, Europe, and India, and is the author of The Articulate Mammal (Fourth Edition, 1998), Language Change (Third Edition, 2001), Linguistics (Fifth Edition, 1999), The Seeds of Speech (1996), and The Language Web (1997).