28.3627, All: Obituary: Florian Menz (1960–2017)

Tue Sep 5 16:36:12 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3627. Tue Sep 05 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3627, All: Obituary: Florian Menz (1960–2017)

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Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:35:56
From: Jürgen Spitzmüller [juergen.spitzmueller at univie.ac.at]
Subject: Obituary: Florian Menz (1960–2017)

Dear colleagues

It was with great sadness that we learned of the passing of our dear colleague
and friend Florian Menz on Friday, 30 June 2017. After short and severe
illness, he passed away much too early. We grieve for a wonderful human being,
for a much appreciated colleague and teacher, and for an internationally
respected researcher.

Florian Menz was born in 1960 in Bolzano, South Tyrol. Born into a family of
doctors, he came in touch early with the domain that he – as a linguist –
should later devote his greatest interest to: medicine and doctor-patient
communication. After graduating from the Franciscan Gymnasium in Bolzano,
which he did with the highest possible number of points (60 of 60 – a truly
remarkable result), Florian Menz studied General and Applied Linguistics at
the University of Vienna and Freie Universität Berlin. Even as a student, he
already contributed to research projects.

His PhD thesis completed in 1989 and published with Peter Lang in 1991 – Der
geheime Dialog. Medizinische Ausbildung und institutionalisierte
Verschleierungen in der Arzt-Patient-Kommunikation [The Secret Dialogue.
Medical Training and Institutionalized Opaqueness in Doctor-Patient
Communication] – already constituted a ground-breaking contribution to the
field of research that Florian Menz would become best known for,
internationally and far beyond the boundaries of linguistics: organizational
communication, specifically in the domain of medicine. Since the mid-1980s, he
contributed to several team research projects. Indeed, one of these, the
project Alltag in der Ambulanz [Business as Usual in the Outpatient Clinic]
which was published as a monograph in 1990, was even awarded the renowned
Pharmig-Award of the Austrian Medical Association. His countless publications
and the interdisciplinary research projects – led by him as PI and conducted
with varying teams – on doctor-patient communication, to psychiatry and
communication are exemplary for an application-oriented, yet theory-driven
understanding of Applied Linguistics.

In 1999, Florian Menz qualified as a professor with the habilitation thesis
'''Was soll denn das Chaos?' Selbst- und Fremdorganisation durch Kommunikation
in Wirtschaftsunternehmen'' [“What is the Point of all this Chaos?” Self- and
External-Organisation through Communication in Business Enterprises],
published with Deutscher Universitätsverlag a year later as ''Selbst- und
Fremdorganisation im Diskurs. Interne Kommunikation in
Wirtschaftsunternehmen'' [Self- and External-Organisation in Discourse.
Internal Communication in Business Enterprises]. In the same year as his
habilitation, Florian Menz was promoted to Außerordentlicher
Universitätsprofessor [Associate Professor] for Applied Linguistics. He
continued to work in this position at Vienna University’s Department for
Linguistics until his death.

Beside his PhD and habilitation theses, Florian Menz contributed numerous
groundbreaking publications to the field of organizational communication, many
of them in interdisciplinary cooperation, including the ''Handbuch
Stakeholderkommunikation'' [Handbook Stakeholder-Communication] (2008, 2nd
edition 2014), which he co-edited with Heinz K. Stahl. Although institutional
or organizational communication was clearly his most important field, it was
by no means the only one. Quite to the contrary, Florian Menz’s research
covers a wide range of fields in Applied Linguistics. His impressive academic
oeuvre cannot be presented exhaustively here. The bibliography of the Austrian
Library Network alone lists 170 academic publications by Florian Menz, many of
them co-authored with colleagues, for he loved working in teams, often with
colleagues from other fields, because interdisciplinarity was more to him than
a fashionable label.

His graduate thesis dealt with research into language teaching, the
sociolinguistic analysis of student essays. His many papers in critical
discourse analysis engaged, among other topics, with language and ideology and
with language and prejudice. In these, he collaborated with colleagues of the
''Vienna School of Critical Discourse Analysis'', time and again pinpointing
sensitive aspects of postwar social and political discourse in Austria. This
includes work on the discourse about Carinthian Slovenes, on nationalism, on
the discursive construction of the past/s as well as on language policies for
so-called 'minorities', in particular Romani and Sinti. However, Florian Menz
was also very involved in the methodology and methods of an interdisciplinary
linguistics, an area he always strongly emphasized in teaching.

Florian Menz was a dedicated and popular university teacher. The earnestness
and sincerity with which he responded to the questions, ideas and concerns of
students was remarkable. He cared deeply about promoting and supporting junior
researchers in his research projects, but also in his undergraduate and
graduate classes.

It is not only in Applied Linguistics that Florian Menz will be sorely missed.
When – in keeping with his dedication to an interdisciplinary approach – he
gave lectures, held talks for medical or legal professionals, when he
participated in conferences or panel discussions, people were impressed not
only by his research but also by his convincing and engaging manner of
communicating his research. Moreover, Florian Menz was an exceptional teacher
in continued education and vocational training. For nearly twenty years and in
collaboration with several departmental colleagues, he held an annual – and
always fully booked – week-long seminar for school teachers and other
professionals on the topic of ''Language and Power/Language and Politics''.

Since 2014, Florian Menz was Head of the Department for Linguistics at Vienna
University. The affable and professional way in which he headed the
department, always aiming for consensus, flat hierarchies and efficient use of
resources, impressed us. He has left a lasting mark on the department; the gap
he leaves behind is vast.

Florian Menz is survived by his wife and three daughters, three brothers and
his parents.

We grieve for a very well respected colleague. In addition, we grieve for a
wonderful, solidary and very humorous friend.

On behalf of the Vienna Department for Linguistics

Rudolf De Cillia
Helmut Gruber
Johanna Lalouschek
Jürgen Spitzmüller
Eva Vetter
Ruth Wodak

Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable

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