WELCOME to the fourth in our popular School of Thought series, in which we reveal the lessons truly learned by those in search of knowledge, wisdom and a school dinner.

This week's lesson...

Which school/college? University of Bath

What lesson? Psychology

What year? This is a lecture made up of first year students from a variety of courses taking an introduction to psychology.

What day? Wednesday, 9.15am

Teacher? Professor Alan Lewis

What did we learn? Today's lecture (not lesson, we are all grown ups now remember) concerned language and social life. For 50 minutes, the 200 strong congregation were told about the use of language in social situations and how language can change according to different social contexts e.g. a football match, tea with your in-laws, etc.

Language is often ambiguous, we were told. Professor Lewis used a fine example of a broken coffee machine bearing the sign 'OUT OF ORDER - BLACK COFFEE ONLY' to illustrate his point.

It can either mean the machine will serve up its whole range of other drinks EXCEPT black coffee, or can ONLY serve black coffee.

There followed some talk of paralinguistic messages (how we alter pitch/volume and add 'mmms' and 'ahhs' to convey meaning) and the use of 'turn taking'.