Noted linguist appointed new humanities dean

If you've ever taken a linguistics course, the name John Archibald will already be familiar to you. He's the co-editor of the longstanding best-selling introductory text on linguistics—Contemporary Linguistic Analysis—and he is also UVic's new dean of humanities.

Archibald comes to UVic after a 19-year career at the University of Calgary during which he held a variety of roles, most recently as a linguistics professor and head of the linguistics department and associate director of U of C's Language Research Centre. For the past eight years he has also been the university's orator, and wrote citations for many honorary degree recipients including Romeo Dallaire, Atom Egoyan and Murray McLauchlan.

"Dr. Archibald already has a distinguished record of achievement as a researcher, teacher and administrator," says Vice-President Academic and Provost Jamie Cassels. "He comes with the strongest recommendations and a deep support within the faculty. The leadership skills, experience and interpersonal qualities he brings to his new role as dean will immensely benefit both the faculty and the university."

Archibald's research focuses on the acquisition of phonology, why some sound systems are easier to learn than others, including foreign-accented speech.

"Before I was a linguist I trained as an actor," explains Archibald, who graduated with a University of Toronto degree in English literature and drama in 1981. "While providing vocal coaching to some non-English-speaking actors, I started to wonder about the origins and structures of their accents. This led me to take further training as a speech teacher and, ultimately, to my career in linguistics.

"I'm interested how children and adults acquire second languages. There's a lot of research available that shows how children from immigrant families can benefit—linguistically, cognitively and socially—by maintaining two or more languages; the mother tongue should be maintained. Every immigrant family wonders about this, and I've been doing lots of outreach to help get this message out."

Archibald says his main role as dean will be to support the faculty in achieving its academic goals and vision. "For the faculty to continue to be successful, we need to recognize that every undergraduate and graduate student, every staff and faculty member are simultaneously working toward fulfilling their individual goals and, at the same time, working toward a common vision of creating an environment for an engaging student experience."

The father of four children, he is married to linguistics professor Martha McGinnis, who begins teaching at UVic this fall.

Archibald's five-year term began on July 1.