Henry George Widdowson (born 28 May 1935, in Leicester, England) is an applied linguist, internationally well known for his ideas about discourse and the nature of communication in relation to a wide range of areas of English study, including literary stylistics, critical discourse analysis, and English language education. He is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of London, an Honorary Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
In the early 1990s, he collaborated with Barbara Seidlhofer in initiating enquiry into the description of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and its significance as a global means of communication both for disciplinary study of language and for the pedagogy of its teaching. In 2015, he received the British Council's Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his research and his wider involvement in the English Language Teaching (ELT) community.
Widdowson was educated at Alderman Newton's School in Leicester. Later he studied English, French and German literature for his first degree at KingâÂÂs College, Cambridge (1953-1956). In November 1958, after two years of military service in the Royal Navy, he took the post of lecturer in English literature at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. In early 1962 he joined the British Council, first as an Education Officer in Sri Lanka, then as an English Language Officer in Bangladesh. In 1964, the British Council sent him to follow a diploma course in applied linguistics in Edinburgh. In 1965, he returned to his post in Bangladesh where he sought to put into practice his ideas of English for specific purposes (ESP) which had been initially explored in his Edinburgh diploma thesis: âÂÂThe teaching of English through scienceâÂÂ. This experience persuaded him of the need for further research into discourse analysis. He left the British Council in 1969 to take up a temporary lectureship to do a PhD in Edinburgh under the supervision of Pit Corder. In 1971, he successfully applied for a permanent lecturer post there and gained a PhD in the subject at the same institution in 1973.
In 1977, he left Edinburgh to take up the chair of English as a Foreign Language at the University of London Institute of Education. In 1980, together with Patrick Allenàand Bernard Spolsky, he launched the new journal Applied Linguistics. At about the same time, he became chairman of the British CouncilâÂÂs English Teaching Advisory Committee. Between 1980 and 2008, he was the advisor for Applied Linguistics publishing at the Oxford University Press.
Between 1983 and 1986, together with Ann Brumfit, Scott Windeatt and Christopher Hyde, he has written several books of activities designed to make learners aware of the significance of grammar as a communicative resource. The rational of their design appeared later as Chapter 10 of his book Aspects of Language Teaching (1990). In 1992, he spent a sabbatical term at the University of Vienna, and on his return early in 1993 he accepted the part-time post of professor of applied linguistics at the University of Essex. This change of employment coincided with an extension in the scope of his academic work as this related to discourse analysis and corpus linguistics as well.
In 1995, Widdowson began working on a new series: the Oxford Introductions to Language Study. In this series, he and his colleagues presented their areas of expertise to enable pre-service and in-service teachers, students in general to critically appraise the ideas and findings of linguistics and related disciplines, and to give them a clear understanding of what these ideas and findings are. Over ten years, a dozen titles appeared at fairly regular intervals: Henry Widdowson on Linguistics (1996) and George Yule on Pragmatics (1996) were followed by Bernard Spolsky on Sociolinguistics (1998), Thomas Scovel on Psycholinguistics (1998), Rod Ellis on Second Language Acquisition (1997), Claire Kramsch on Language and Culture (1998), Peter Roach on Phonetics (2001), Peter Verdonk on Stylistics (2002), Tim McNamara on Language Testing (2000), Herbert Schendl on Historical Linguistics (2001), Guy Cook on Applied Linguistics (2003), Michael Swan on Grammar (2005), Henry George Widdowson Discourse Analysis (2007).
He took early retirement from his positions in Essex and London in 1998. Since 1998, he is Emeritus Professor of Education, University of London, and Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex. From 1998 to 2001 he has been Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna, where he now holds an Honorary Professorship (Department of English). Since the 1990s, Widdowson lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Widdowson is co-editor of Language Teaching: A Scheme for Teacher Education (1987). He has also published such seminal works as On the subject of English: the Linguistics of Language Use and Learning (2020), Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis (2004), Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (2003), and Practical Stylistics: An Approach to Poetry (1992).
WiddowsonâÂÂs early career is perhaps best known for his contribution to applied linguistics and communicative language teaching. However, his later theorising on discourse covers a wide range of areas of language use and communication. Hence, he hasàpublished onàsuch subjects as discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, the global spread of English, English as a lingua franca, English for Special Purposes, literary criticism, stylistics and many others.
Widdowson has been fascinated by the English language since childhood, and his entire career can be seen as a personal exploration of the mysteries of English and language use in general. Later, Widdowson's interest in research was motivated by his personal experience of teaching English literature to students in Jakarta in the 1970s, and thus involved 'the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue'. This academic expertise in the teaching experience was reflected in his dissertation, 'The Teaching of English through Science', which appeared in 1968 as his first publication in the Language and Language Learning series (edited by Ronald Mackin and Peter Strevens). Here he pioneered the ideas now known as English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
His PhD thesis titled âÂÂAn applied linguistic approach to discourse analysisâ was prompted by the same problem of ESP. But the relevance of what have emerged from the research was far from being confined to ESP. This dissertation can be claimed to be the first of its kind in the field of discourse analysis. It is an enquiry into nature of language use and the pragmatics of discourse in general. The research addresses the question about the relationship between textual analysis and discourse interpretation and suggests that this question comes up in any area of language use, in general, and in language teaching and learning in particular.
WiddowsonâÂÂs theoretical bearings on the nature of language and language use concern the of three main issues, which recur throughout his inquiry and writing:
Widdowson is perhaps best known for his contribution to communicative language teaching. However, he has also published on other related subjects such as discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, the global spread of English, English for Special Purposes and stylistics.The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning calls him "probably the most influential philosopher of the late twentieth century for international ESOL". He has authored a number of highly influential papers. His 1994 paper in TESOL Quarterly, for instance, has become a key paper in the rationale behind English as a lingua franca and what has become known as the "ownership" of English.