‘There was all this terminology proliferating and the students needed to know precise terms, not vague or impressionistic ones’: An interview with Katie Wales

Katie Wales was Professor of English Language at Royal Holloway College, University of London, before moving to the University of Leeds to become Professor of Modern English Language. She later moved to the University of Sheffield and is currently Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. She is a co-founder of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) and was instrumental in setting up the journal Language and Literature, serving as its second editor between 1996 and 2004. In this interview she explains how she found out about stylistics as an undergraduate student; how she established an academic career; and how she was able to integrate stylistics into her teaching in the face of resistance from the literary establishment. She discusses her long-standing interest in dialectology and the importance of incorporating a historical perspective into stylistic work. She also discusses the importance of PALA as a support network for stylisticians, particularly in the light of the current assault on the humanities in the UK and elsewhere.