Michael Clyne

Australian linguist, academic and intellectual

Michael George Clyne, AM, FAHA, FASSA (12 October 1939 – 29 October 2010) was an Australian linguist, academic and intellectual. He was a scholar in various fields of linguistics, including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, bilingualism and multilingualism, second language learning, contact linguistics and intercultural communication.

Clyne was born on 12 October 1939 in Prahran, Melbourne. He was the only child of the Jewish Austrian couple Johannes Jacob and Edith Cecily Clyne who had left their home country after the Anschluss. He was educated at Christ Church Grammar School, and at Caulfield Grammar School, where he was taught by Samuel Billigheimer. Clyne studied for his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees at the University of Melbourne, focusing on Germanic and French languages. He undertook further graduate studies in German and general linguistics at Utrecht and Bonn Universities, before joining the German language faculty at Monash University in Melbourne in 1962. He earned a PhD from Monash in 1965, and was a Professor of Linguistics at the University from 1988 to 2001. In 2001 he became a professorial fellow of linguistics at Melbourne University and director of the university's Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross Cultural Communication. He retired in 2005. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia on 13 June 1993 "in recognition of service to education, particularly in the field of linguistics." Clyne was a recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and the Arts 1st cl and the German Cross of Merit 1st cl., He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. Clye married Irene Donohoue in 1977, and they had a daughter Joanna. He died on 29 October 2010 in his home of heart failure, aged 71.

Clyne published numerous books and articles (28 authored, co authored and edited books and over 300 articles and book chapters) of research in areas of linguistics, particularly in the field of bilingualism. The books include Language and Society in the German speaking Countries (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1984), and its sequel The German Language in a Changing Europe (CUP, 1995), Community Languages The Australian experience (CUP 1991), Pluricentric Languages (ed, Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), Inter Cultural Communication at Work (CUP, 1994), Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning (ed, Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), Dynamics of Language Contact (CUP 2003), and Australia's Language Potential (University of New South Wales Press, 2005). Lasting influence can be seen in Clyne's publications on linguistic pluricentricity, particularly in the German language, for which Clyne originally developed the notion in Language and Society in the German speaking Countries in 1984 and which a number of scholars have developed further. In the book, Developing Second Language From Primary School: Models and Outcomes(1995), the importance of a separate physical classroom is identified as an important factor which can contribute to the successful teaching of a language other than English in primary schools.