28.4926, All: Obituary: Jim Milroy, 1933-2017

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4926. Sat Nov 25 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4926, All: Obituary: Jim Milroy, 1933-2017

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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 10:46:48
From: Paul Foulkes [paul.foulkes at york.ac.uk]
Subject: Obituary: Jim Milroy, 1933-2017

 
We are sad to report the passing of Jim Milroy on 12 November 2017.

James Robert Dunlop Milroy was born in Portpatrick in south-west Scotland. The
son of a farmer, as a child he lived in Scotland, North Wales (where he
learned Welsh) and Surrey.  This experience of hearing and acquiring Welsh and
the local accents of his childhood kindled his interest in language and
dialects.

Jim was a successful and highly respected academic linguist. As a graduate
student, he went on a Fulbright scholarship to Washington University, St
Louis, and spent the early years of his career teaching at the University of
Colorado at Boulder.  He loved the USA, finding the people warm and good
company, and was happy to return there many years later. In the early 1960s he
taught at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester, where he met his wife
Lesley.  They married in 1965 and three sons arrived in quick succession.  Jim
moved to Queen’s University Belfast where he and Lesley carried out pioneering
work in sociolinguistics.  The tight-knit communities of Belfast in the 1970s
provided excellent laboratories for this research.  He was very much at home
in Belfast, and particularly loved to be close to the beauty of the west of
Ireland.  In 1981, he moved to take the Chair of Linguistics at the University
of Sheffield, and later continued research with Lesley at Newcastle University
and then for another decade at the University of Michigan before retiring to
Deddington, Oxfordshire, in 2005. He remained Emeritus Professor of
Linguistics at the University of Sheffield, and latterly Fellow of the Faculty
of Linguistics and Philology, University of Oxford.

Jim’s work in sociolinguistics and language change remains immensely
influential. He is perhaps best known for his books "Authority in Language
"(1985, co-authored with Lesley, and now in its 4th edition), "Linguistic
variation and change: on the historical sociolinguistics of English" (1992),
and "Real
English: the grammar of English dialects in the British Isles" (1993, also
co-authored with Lesley). Jim was also instrumental in establishing the
Sociolinguistics Symposium, now the largest and most important international
event in the field. He remained active in the field after retirement,
continuing to publish, teaching summer schools, and attending conferences.

Those who knew Jim will remember him as an exceptionally erudite and eloquent
scholar. He was modest and self-deprecating about his contribution to the
field, and generous with his time and support of colleagues and students. He
was particularly supportive of young people, having little time for those who
were overly critical of them and recognising that each generation confronts
different issues. Jim was gentle and humorous, making him great fun to be
around.

He will be very much missed by Lesley, his sons David, Andrew, and Richard,
his grandchildren James, Maddy, Flo, Meera, Georgia and Becca, and by his old
colleagues and friends.

His memorial service will be held at Deddington Parish Church on Wednesday 6
December at 2.30 pm.

If desired, donations for Katharine House Hospice can be made via their
website (https://www.khh.org.uk/donate/; please indicate that this is in
memory of Jim). Donations may also be sent c/o Humphris Funerals (
www.humphrisfunerals.co.uk).
 


Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable



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