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A tribute to Christopher N. Candlin

Monique Mémet
p. 6

Christopher N. Candlin passed away on 10th May 2015; he had been on the scientific committee of ASp since 2002 – volume ASp 35-36. He had accepted to join our team after the 22nd GERAS Conference in Bordeaux where he gave a captivating plenary entitled “Mediating among discourse worlds: professional and academic discourses in the study and practice of Law”. His lecture derived from a research project – “Improving legal English” – sponsored by the University of Hong Kong and involving other researchers, among whom Vijay K. Bhatia, also a plenary speaker at the same GERAS conference organised by the then President of GERAS, Michel Perrin.

Chris Candlin, who was a Senior Research Professor Emeritus of linguistics at Macquerie University in Sydney, Australia, published extensively.1 He held many positions in the applied linguistics world, among which the leadership of Association internationale de linguistique appliquée (AILA) – he was AILA President from 1996 to 2002.

However, I am not going to list here his numerous books or his abundant, diverse activities,2 but I will relate instead a more personal event which gave me the opportunity to appreciate his enthusiasm, his energy, his open-mindedness and kindness. I met him in New York in 1999 at the TESOL International Conference. We had been invited to participate in a colloquium entitled “Building ESP teacher education programs”. Vijay K. Bhatia and himself presented “English for Specific Purposes: Programme development for the new Millenium”, Tony Dudley-Evans talked about “The ESP options at the University of Birmingham, UK”, Liz England about “In-service training: ESP preparation in the United States” and myself about “ESP teacher education programs in France”.

We had met before the session around a dinner table the previous evening. Chris Candlin immediately made me feel at ease; we had casual exchanges about many different topics; one of them had to do with French applied linguists joining AILA again as, in those days, the French association was divided. He talked about France and its culture, which he knew well and enjoyed.

Chris Candlin will be missed.

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