Stanley Ellis (18 February 1926 in

Bradford Bradford is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in West Yorkshire, England. It became a municipal borough in 1847, received a city charter in 1897 and, since the Local Government Act 1972, 1974 reform, the city status in the United Kingdo ...

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire was one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the riding was an administrative county named County of York, West Riding. The Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, lieu ...

– 31 October 2009 in

Harrogate Harrogate ( ) is a spa town and civil parish in the North Yorkshire District, district and North Yorkshire, county of North Yorkshire, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist de ...

) was an English

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

scholar and broadcaster, and an authority on English regional dialects. Born in

, he attended Grange Grammar School and obtained a scholarship to study at Corpus Christi College,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. His studies were interrupted by

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, during which he was a navigator in the RAF. After

national service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...

, part of which was spent in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, he read English at

Leeds University The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed ...

, with a master's thesis on the

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...

dialect. He worked as principal researcher under

Harold Orton Harold Orton (23 October 1898 – 7 March 1975) was a British dialectologist and professor of English language and Medieval Literature at the University of Leeds. Early life Orton was born in Byers Green, County Durham, on 23 October 1898 and ...

on the four volume ''

Survey of English Dialects The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. It aimed to collect the full range of speech in England and Wales before local differe ...

''. Ellis performed much of the field work this entailed, and many of his recordings and interviews are housed in the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture. He went on to be a lecturer and senior lecturer in the School of English at Leeds. He was the first person to provide expert evidence for speaker identification in an English court, and in June 1979, he correctly identified that a tape released by police that purported to be from the Yorkshire Ripper was by a hoaxer (nicknamed Wearside Jack by the press), as the accent was that of someone from an area a significant distance from the crime scene. However, the police disregarded his warning. The hoaxer was finally identified in 2006, and shown to have lived his life in the region Ellis had identified. His colleague on the case and in university,

Jack Windsor Lewis Jack Windsor Lewis (1926 – 11 July 2021) was a British phonetician. He is best known for his work on the phonetics of English and the teaching of English pronunciation to foreign learners. His blog postings on English phonetics and phonetician ...

, said in November 2012 that Ellis had located the speaker to the Wearside area by comparing his speech with that of a recording made whilst studying the dialect of

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

, but dismissed the reports that Ellis located him as precisely as Castletown. After taking early retirement from his university post, Ellis continued to provide linguistic expertise as an expert witness in court cases. From the 1980s, he presented a series of programmes on dialect for

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

, entitled "Take a Place Like ..." and "Talk of the Town, Talk of the Country", and later was a host of radio phone-ins, discussing dialect and origins of names and placenames with callers, as well as contributing to programmes such as ''The Routes of English''.BBC – Radio 4 – Routes of English
/ref> In ''Talking for Britain: A Journey Through the Nation's Dialects'' (2005), Simon Elmes paid tribute to Ellis: 'Stanley's deep linguistic wisdom and his love of the British landscape – the people who live in it and who describe it in their talk – inspired me to pursue my own long fascination' (p. x). He was awarded honorary life membership of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics in 2004.

References

External links

– Daily Telegraph obituary {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, Stanley 1926 births 2009 deaths Academics of the University of Leeds Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Leeds British radio presenters English broadcasters Linguists from England Writers from Bradford Royal Air Force personnel of World War II