Michael Hoey

Michael Hoey (24 February 1948 – 10 September 2021) was a British linguist and Baines Professor of English Language. He lectured in applied linguistics in over 40 countries. Early life Michael Peter Hoey was born in Preston in 1948, the son of Charles Hoey, a chemical engineer, and his wife, Mary. He grew up in Hemel Hempstead, where the family had moved to when he was very young. He began studying Law at UCL but felt that the subject did not appeal to his interest in people and how they form identities. He soon realised that his real interests lay elsewhere, and transferred to a degree in English. His interest in the English language was stimulated by the tuition of the celebrated linguist Sir Randolph Quirk. He met Sue Ward, a fellow student, whom he married in 1971. They had two children, Alice and Richard. Professional life Hoey's first teaching job was at Hatfield Polytechnic, where he started as Research Assistant in 1970, and was promoted to be senior lecturer in 1977, where he worked with Eugene Winter until both of them moved on to teach at Birmingham University in 1979. As Senior lecturer at Birmingham, he co-authored (with Sue Atkins) under the direction of Professor John Sinclair the proposal that led to the development of the Collins CoBUILD (an acronym for Collins Birmingham University International Language Database), the first-ever corpus-driven dictionary. "Without realising it," Hoey relates, "I was slowly mutating into a corpus linguist." Hoey was appointed Baines Professor of English Language in 1993, at the University of Liverpool. He was the Director of the Applied English Language Studies Unit between 1993 and 2003, and between 2008 and 2009 he was Dean of the University's Faculty of Arts. He also served as Director of Curriculum Development. In 2010, he became Pro-Vice-Chancellor International. Furthermore, Hoey served as Director of the Liverpool Confucius Institute. He was an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of Council of the University of Chester.