I am retired Professor of English Language and Linguistics (University of Huddersfield 1989 – 2022) and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University (2022 -). Since 2019, I have also been the Chair of the University Council for General and Applied Linguistics (UCGAL) which is the umbrella organisation for linguistics in the UK. I intend to use my second term of office in this role to make a difference to the public perception and understanding of our field.
I graduated from the University of Reading with a Linguistics B.A. in 1978, worked as a Research Assistant there for a year and then moved to Leeds, where I was Research Assistant for the Oxford University Press Lexical Research Unit whilst studying for my PhD which was awarded in 1988. Its title is ‘A corpus-based stylistic study of newspaper English’. I was also writing my first book, The Language of Twentieth Century Poetry during that period, so politics and poetry have always co-existed in my research.
I was appointed as a junior lecturer to the University of Huddersfield in September 1989 and stayed loyal to that institution throughout my career. Some might see this as foolhardy, though I was prepared to believe that with the right approach you could build something special and for a while we did. Despite the manner in which our collective work was thrown aside in the end, I have many positive memories of the coworkers and students who I met over those years for which I am very grateful.
I remain an active researcher (see Projects page) and will continue to work on a range of fronts whilst I have strength and enthusiasm! I look forward to the next chapter in my working life, which will be more relaxed though I hope just as rewarding as the 45 years or so since I first encountered the strange and wonderful world of linguistics.
Lesley Jeffries, October 6th 2022
Lesley Jeffries 