John E Joseph BA MA PhD FRSA

Professor John E. Joseph

Contact Information and Office Hours

Postal Address: Professor John E. Joseph
Linguistics & English Language
The School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
The University of Edinburgh
Dugald Stewart Building
3 Charles Street
Edinburgh, EH8 9AD
United Kingdom
Telephone, fax and email: t: +44 (0)131 650 3497 (Office)
f: +44 (0)131 651 3190
e: John.Joseph@ed.ac.uk
Office hours: Room 2.08 Dugald Stewart Building, by appointment
   
Saussure book cover

"John E. Joseph's
monumental Saussure...
sheds brilliant light
on his life and work"
...John A. Goldsmith, Nature

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Courses in 2017-18

MSc Courses:

Honours Course:

Posts Held

Professor of Applied Linguistics, The University of Edinburgh (since 1 January 1997). I have served as Head of Linguistics & English Language (2011-2014), having previously been Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics from 1997 until 1999, when we merged to form the Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics. Another merger in 2005 has created Linguistics & English Language (LEL) as a subject area within the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences (PPLS).

LEL descends principally from the Chair of English Language and General Linguistics, to which Angus McIntosh (1914-2005) was appointed in 1948, and the School of Applied Linguistics, founded by Ian Catford in 1957. In 1964 McIntosh's chair was split, with him continuing to occupy the Chair of English Language, while a new chair of General Linguistics was created to which John Lyons was appointed. Also in 1964 a Chair of Phonetics was created for David Abercrombie (1909-1992), who had been lecturing at Edinburgh since 1948. In 1967 General Linguistics and Phonetics merged to form the Department of Linguistics & Phonetics, then were joined in 1969 by Applied Linguistics to form the Department of Linguistics. Applied Linguistics then split off in 1985 to form a separate department.

Previous posts and visiting posts

Professor of English Language and Linguistics and Head of the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong (1993-96). Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Maryland at College Park (1986-93). Assistant, then Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Oklahoma State University (1981-85).

From 1978-80 I taught French at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor while completing my PhD there, and in 1980-81 was Lecturer in Linguistics at the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France. In 1985 I was Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Maine, and in 1993 I held joint fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. In 1998 I spent a month as Visiting Research Associate in the Center for English Language Research and Teaching at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. In 1999-2000 I held a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for a project on identity and the construction of language. In the summers of 2000 and 2001 I taught a course on the Master's in Applied Linguistics at RELC, the Regional Language Centre of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation, in Singapore, and in the summers of 2003-4 I co-convened (with Talbot J. Taylor) a Summer Institute on "The Concept of Language in the Academic Disciplines" at the National Humanities Center (North Carolina) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Offices in Professional Organisations

Editorial Activities