Routledge
Useful Web Links Colour Paintings: Unit 1 Children's Language Acquisition Language & Educational Linguistics
Discussion Topics Conversation Analysis Pragmatics Gricean Implicature Interpreting Utterances Sociolinguistics Grammar Language Change Multilingualism Semantics Words
What is a sentence? Apostrophes Matter Lost Consonants Old Words, New Meanings Punctuation Matters Startings and Finishings
Introduction Contents List Sample Reading Reader Sample Bookmap Strands Bookmap Cross-referencing

About the Authors

Andrew John Merrison

Andrew John Merrison

You'd be amazed where your undergraduate degree can lead you…!

My academic career had the most inauspicious of beginnings. In 1984, I did stupendously badly in my A levels: a D grade in maths, and ordinary (non-passing) grades in physics and chemistry. Fourteen years later, I had 4 very respectable A levels (pure maths, applied maths, physics and German), a diploma in accountancy, a BA in language in linguistic science, an MSc in cognitive science and natural language and a PhD in linguistics. Evidence that if at first you don't succeed, you shouldn't give up — just find something that you actually enjoy doing! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack just a little…

Once upon a time (sometime before the what-is-now-called-UCAS deadline of December 15th, 1986) the plan was for me to become a chartered accountant and have a Porsche by the time I was thirty. I am now in my mid-40s and I have achieved neither of those ‘great’ plans: I'm now a linguist and I drive a Skoda (and even then, only when it's not in the hands of my wife, Sally) …well at least we get good miles to the gallon! But am I bitter? Do I regret the life I never got to lead? Do I hummer (as Sally would say)!

With the background I had (maths, physics, German and accountancy) it is certainly strange that I ended up attached to the University of York's department of Language and Linguistics from 1987 to 1991 — that is until you realise that a friend of mine, (now Professor) Graham Turner, was always coming home on vacations telling me how exciting he found phonetics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, semantics and all manner of other interesting sounding subjects. So intrigued was I that one weekend in a summer term I visited him and, because I didn't want to be left alone while he was in lectures, the department too. My first hint of linguistics was a phonetics lecture by (now Professor) John Local — he was wearing a bright green jumper and although I cannot remember what he was talking about I certainly can remember how he was talking about it: with excited energetic eagerness. Linguistics must be fun I thought, and before I knew it, I was back in a John Local lecture — but this time I was an official student (he was still wearing that green jumper though). I have never looked back.

I was very fortunate to be at York when I was: my first year was spent in overlap with Graham Turner — we used to cook together each night (under the pseudonyms of ‘Marjorie’ and ‘Joan’) and in all the time we never had the same meal twice. Year two found me (and my best friend Sally) in Germany. Year three was a real eye-opener — I got a scholarship to study at the University of California at Santa Cruz where I also experienced a 7.1 on the Richter Scale earthquake (I was in an orchestra rehearsal at the time — playing Haydn's ‘Surprise’ Symphony!). In my fourth and final year, nothing much happened: I revitalised the departmental magazine; I nearly failed my Structure & History of Chinese paper for being over industrious (and ever so slightly innovative); I got engaged to Sally and then I graduated with a first class degree and left.

I am convinced that it was the York connection that got me a place on the MSc course in cognitive science in Edinburgh. If not, then it must have been the reference from Bill Ladusaw who I had met and become great friends with in Santa Cruz in year three. And who did I find as the external examiner? None other than Steve Harlow, Head of Department at York (small world). And then, with a thesis of distinction tucked under his 44-inch belt this ex-would-be accountant managed to gain funding for a PhD in the linguistics department at Edinburgh, supervised by Jim Miller, a very good friend of my old York supervisor, Patrick Griffiths (small world again)!

Towards the end of my PhD I took up two posts (well … the funding ran out): one as a 50% researcher for Newcastle University (working for yet another ex-York lecturer: (now Professor) Karen Corrigan) and one as a one-term stand-in for Durham's Peter Grundy lecturing to under- and postgraduates. Now that was a York connection that got me the job: when Joe Emonds was looking for a replacement he asked Graham Turner (then also working at Durham) who declined but put my name forward as a likely candidate, and then when Joe called his mate Steve Harlow, he was told that that ex-would-be accountant was a ‘brilliant even bright’ linguist. Thanks Steve.

Finally, 14 years after those horrendous A level results, I submitted my PhD (‘Doing Aphasia: aphasic discourse from a non-aphasic perspective’) which used a combination of conversation analytic and discourse analytic procedures to investigate the interactional differences found in dialogues between (1) aphasic and non-aphasic individuals and (2) the same non-aphasic subjects and age-matched non-aphasic control subjects. And would you like to guess who ended up as my external examiner? Only Professor John Local … though not wearing a green jumper that day!

Since then, my research interests can perhaps best be described under the heading of ‘Social Inter-action’ (hyphen intentional), with particular reference to the interpretation of implicit meaning and the social management of (mis)communication.

I am committed to the principle that in the study of communication, almost anything might be relevant and therefore nothing should, a priori, be neglected from analysis. One must, until proven otherwise, consider all aspects of the data, from morphology, syntax and semantics to non-linguistic and paralinguistic phenomena. It is my belief in this principle that led me to study non-verbal behaviour and to adopt a conversation analytic approach to discourse.

Ultimately, I am interested in the way that communication is collaboratively achieved and in particular, my research interests include:

I have been a full-time lecturer at York St John since January 1999 and I teach mainly conversation analysis, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. I have been an executive member of the UK's Linguistic Politeness Research Group for the last decade, and play an active role in the management of the associated Journal of Politeness Research. My biggest current project is a long-term joint venture with colleagues and friends at Leeds University (Bethan Davies) and Heriot-Watt University (Graham Turner, Gary Quinn and Kyra Politt) on the nature of interpretted interactions between monolingual British Sign Language users and monolingual English speakers.

To varying standards — but probably with equal enjoyment (and equal rarity) — I play viola, bridge and golf. Perhaps the oddest personal detail to add is that it appears that I have an uncanny ‘gift’/‘passion’/‘obsession’ in spotting (and rectifying) typographical errors: so should you find any erroneously italicised commas in our books, then it will almost certainly be me who will be most ashamed of them!

I married Sally in 1996 and we have two sons, Ben and Joe. I love them all greatly and wish I played with them more.

Recent Publications