Geoffrey Leech
Geoffrey Leech (born January 16, 1936 in Gloucester , Gloucestershire, England, † August 19, 2014 in Lancaster , Lancashire , England) was a British philologist and linguist. From 1974 to 2002 he was Professor of Linguistics and Modern English at Lancaster University . Then he devoted himself to researching the English language. Since 2002 he has been Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Lancaster .
life and work
Main interest
Leech mainly dealt with semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, corpus analysis and the analysis of the English language through the use of computers. After a break of 20 years, he was actively researching in the field of pragmatics again. According to him, there is a principle of courtesy with dialogue-oriented maxims, similar to those that Paul Grice formulated. Since 2005, when he and his colleague Mick Short won the PALA 25 (PALA = Poetic and Linguistic Association) prize for their book Style and Fiction (Longman, 1981), he has been more concerned with stylistics. A few years ago, in 2007, the two authors brought out a second edition of Style and Fiction .
Career and academic degrees
Leech studied from 1955 to 1968 at UCL (University College London), where he was a lecturer from 1962 to 1965 and lecturer in English from 1965 to 1969 at the same. At UCL he completed the following degrees: BA (1959), MA (1963), Ph.D. (1968). In addition, Leech received the following academic degrees: Fil.Dr. (Honorary Doctorate), Lund University (1987), Hon.D.Litt. , Wolverhampton University (2002), D.Litt. , University of Lancaster (2002). In 1969, Leech moved to Lancaster University, where he was employed as a lecturer until 1974 and as professor for linguistics and the modern English language from 1974 to 1996. From 1996 onwards, still on behalf of the University of Lancaster , he worked as a Research Professor in English Linguistics with the study of the English language. Since 2002 Leech was professor emeritus for English linguistics there.
Memberships
Geoffrey Leech was also a member of numerous organizations:
- of the British Academy (since 1987)
- of the Academia Europaea (since 1989)
- of the UCL (since 1989)
- the Norske Videnskaps-Akademi (since 1993)
- Hon. Professor of Beijing Foreign Language University (since 1994)
Publications
Geoffrey Leech wrote, was co-author or co-editor of 29 books and well over 100 articles, including a. he contributed to A Grammar of Contemporary English by Quirk and Greenbaum. Here are some of the works listed:
- English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain (1966)
- A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969)
- Meaning and the English Verb (1971, second edition 1987; third edition 2004)
- Semantics (1974; 2nd edition 1981)
- A Communicative Grammar of English (with J. Svartvik) (1975, second edition 1994, third edition 2002)
- Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose (with M. Short) (1981; second edition 2007)
- Principles of Pragmatics (1983)
- A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (with R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum and J. Svartvik) (1985)
- Spoken English on Computer: Transcription, Mark-up and Application (with G. Myers and J. Thomas) (1995)
- Corpus Annotation: Linguistic Information from Computer Text Corpora (with R. Garside and T. McEnery) (1997)
- Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (with D. Biber, S. Johansson, S. Conrad and E. Finegan) (1999)
- An AZ of English Grammar and Usage (with B. Cruickshank and R. Ivanic) (2001)
- Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus (with P. Rayson and A. Wilson) (2001)
- Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (with D. Biber and S. Conrad) (2002)
- A Glossary of English Grammar (2006)
- English - One Tongue, Many Voices (with J. Svartvik) (2006)
- Language in Literature: Style and Foregrounding (2008)
- Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study (with M. Hundt, Ch. Mair and N. Smith) (2009)
literature
- Greg Myers: Geoffrey Neil Leech, 1936-2014 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy . tape XVI , 2017, p. 147-168 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).
Web links
- Vita (English)
- Geoffrey Leech (English)
- In memory of Geoffrey Leech.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Leech, Geoffrey |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British philologist and linguist |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 16, 1936 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Gloucester , Gloucestershire, England |
DATE OF DEATH | 19th August 2014 |
Place of death | Lancaster , Lancashire , England |