Gillian Brown (linguist)

Gillian Brown
Born	(1937-01-23) 23 January 1937 (age 88) [1]
Academic work
Discipline	Linguist
Sub-discipline	Discourse analysis

Gillian Brown CBE (born 1937) is a British linguist. She is known for her expertise on discourse analysis, ^{[2] [3] [4]} and was professor at Clare College Cambridge.

Life

After studying English at Girton College Cambridge, Gillian moved to Uganda and began her study of Bantu languages. Together with her husband Keith Brown (also a linguist), she taught at the University College of Cape Coast in Ghana, before moving to Edinburgh University where she was appointed as Lecturer in General Linguistics in 1965. ^[5] She obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1971, presenting the thesis "Aspects of a phonology of Lumasaaba", ^[6] which was later published as Phonological rules and dialect variation (Cambridge University Press, 1972). ^[7]

In 1983, she became professor of Applied Linguistics and Dean of the School of Social Studies at the University of Essex, and in 1988 became Professor and Founding Director of the Research Centre in English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. ^[8] She joined Clare College Cambridge as a fellow, where she worked until 2004.

Her research interests were listening comprehension; what makes a text difficult to understand; and literary stylistics. She was a member of the 1988 Kingman Committee, ^[9] appointed by the British government to look at the training of teachers of English as a mother tongue.

She has served on university, national, and international committees, and in June 1992, she received a CBE in recognition of her work. ^[10] Throughout her career she wrote many articles, and gave papers at universities and conferences in North America, Europe, Scandinavia, India, Russia, China, and Japan.

Books

• Phonological Rules and Dialect Variation: A Study of the Phonology of Lumasaaba (Cambridge University Press, 1972) ^[7]
• Listening to Spoken English (Longman, 1977) ^[11]
• Questions of Intonation (Routledge, 1980) ^[12]
• Teaching the Spoken Language (Cambridge University Press, 1983) ^[13]
• Discourse Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1983) ^[14]
• Performance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition
• Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1995) ^[15]

References

1. Tomorrow's birthdays. Guardian, London, 22 January 2022, G2, p. 9.
2. Weyters, T. (1983). "Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983. Pp. Xii+288. Price: 20.00 ($ 39,50) - Cloth; 6.95 ($12,95) - Paperback" . Journal of Semantics. 2 (3–4): 354–356. doi:10.1093/semant/2.3-4.354 . Retrieved 30 January 2019.
3. McRoy, Susan (1 December 2000). "Gillian Brown, Speakers, Listeners, and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis". User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction. 10 (4): 309–313. doi:10.1023/A:1008335312076. ISSN   1573-1391. S2CID   12396823.
4. Friedman, Debra A. (30 June 1997). "Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis by Gillian Brown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 251 pp". Issues in Applied Linguistics. 8 (1). doi: 10.5070/L481005255 . ISSN   1050-4273 . Retrieved 30 January 2019.
5. Brown, G. (1 January 2006), Brown, Keith (ed.), "Second Language Listening", Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 81–88, ISBN   978-0-08-044854-1 , retrieved 14 June 2025
6. Brown, Gillian (1971). Aspects of a phonology of Lumasaaba (Thesis). Archived from the original on 27 November 2024.
7. Tuckek, A. N. (October 1973). "Gillian Brown: Phonological rules and dialect variation: a study of the phonology of Lumasaaba. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 7.) xiv, 191 pp. Cambridge: University Press, 1972. £6" . Bulletin of SOAS. 36 (3): 752–753. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00121044. ISSN   1474-0699.
8. Brown, G. (1 January 2006), Brown, Keith (ed.), "Second Language Listening", Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 81–88, ISBN   978-0-08-044854-1 , retrieved 14 June 2025
9. "Kingman Report (1988)". www.education-uk.org. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
10. "Page 7 | Supplement 52952, 12 June 1992 | London Ga..." The Gazette. Archived from the original on 27 November 2024. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
11. Brown, Gillian (1977). Listening to Spoken English. Longman. ISBN   9781315538518.
12. "Questions of Intonation". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
13. "Teaching the Spoken Language". Cambridge University Press Bookshop. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
14. Brown, Gillian; Yule, George (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-28475-2.
15. Brown, Gillian (1995). Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-58705-1.