Kudos to John Swales who was awarded an honorary doctorate from University of Silesia, Poland, during a ceremony in October in the city of Katowice. John has made monumental contributions to the field of applied linguistics, with a focus on topics such as genre analysis, English for academic purposes, discourse analysis, and rhetoric, to name but a few. Over the course of his career, John has published several solo-authored and co-authored monographs, and more than 120 journal articles and book chapters. John is probably most well-known for his work in genre analysis, which was also the topic of his 1990 Cambridge University monograph “Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings” – a work that has been cited more than 9,700 times.

The rector of the University of Silesia (the European version an American college president), in congratulating John, said that in “[a]warding the highest academic degree, the university has expressed their deepest appreciation of your achievements as a distinguished scholar, linguist expert and activist”.

This is the second honorary doctorate for John – he was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Uppsala in 2004. These recognitions of John’s lifelong contributions to the field of applied linguistics is indeed well-deserved. Sincere congratulations, John, from the Michigan linguistics community!