Michael Hoey (linguist)

Michael Hoey is a British linguist and Baines Professor of English Language. He has lectured in applied linguistics in over 40 countries.

Hoey has authored a number of textbooks on linguistics including Signalling in Discourse (1979), On the Surface of Discourse (1983), Patterns of Lexis in Text (1991) (which was awarded the Duke of Edinburgh English-Speaking Union Prize for the best book on Applied Linguistics in 1991), Textual Interaction (2001) and Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language (2005), which proposes a new way of looking at language based on evidence from corpus linguistics. It was shortlisted for best book in applied linguistics by the British Association for Applied Linguistics and described as being "a must for anyone involved in corpus linguistics or with an interest in what shapes the way we use and understand words".

Hoey has had a long association with the University of Liverpool, where he began lecturing in 1993. He was Director of the Applied English Language Studies Unit between 1993 and 2003 and is currently Pro Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation; between 2008 and 2009 he was Dean of the university's Faculty of Arts.^[1]

Hoey is co-editor of a series of books on corpus linguistics published by Routledge, and also serves as the chief adviser on the Macmillan English Dictionary, for which he also wrote the foreword. His administrative roles have included Chair of the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance's English Committee.

Themes

Hoey's work has been described as being "about texts, not isolated words or even words within a sentence"^[2] while in 2007 Hans-Jörg Schmid wrote that Hoey "has long made himself a name as a keen promoter of a lexical approach to text analysis and text linguistics in general. Deeply inspired by Eugene Winter and M. A. K. Halliday, but gradually developing his own characteristic approach, Hoey has produced a number of influential publications in this area, most notably perhaps Patterns of Lexis in Text published in 1991".^[3]

Hoey's research into lexical priming theory in Liverpool has been credited as signalling a shift in linguistics away from the theory of universal grammar espoused by Noam Chomsky.^[4]

Hoey has also written extensively on coherence and cohesive harmony.^[5]

Interests

Hoey is a keen supporter of CAMRA and was the editor of the Real Ale Guide for Southport & District.

Bibliography

• Ventola, Eija (1991). Functional and Systemic Linguistics: Approaches and Uses (Trends in Linguistics: Studies & Monographs). Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-012740-7. 

See also

• Charles J. Fillmore

References

External links

• Review of Patterns of Text: In Honour of Michael Hoey
• Michael Hoey speaking at IATEFL in 2008
• In Conversation with Professor Michael Hoey at the Wayback Machine (archived July 22, 2011).