Australian Dictionary of Biography

Alexander Mitchell, no date

University of Sydney Archives

Alexander George Mitchell (1911–1997), phoneticist, professor of English, and university vice-chancellor, was born on 13 October 1911 at Kempsey, New South Wales, eldest of five sons of locally born parents Robert George Mitchell, dairy farmer, and his wife Martha Mathilda, née Keast. In 1920 the family moved to a farm at Narrowgut, near Morpeth, in the lower Hunter River area. After having no formal lessons until he was nearly eight, Alec (or Alex as he was also known) attended public schools at Smithtown and Morpeth. In 1925 he won a bursary to Maitland Boys’ High School, where he was dux (1929). He later credited his success at school to his boarding at a hostel during the week having liberated him from ‘the old routine’ of ‘a country boy’ (1967, 3695).

Attending the University of Sydney (BA Hons, 1933), again on a bursary, Mitchell fell under the spell of English professor Ernest Rudolph Holme, whose interests included the usage and pronunciation of Australian English. After a year at Sydney Teachers’ College, and a brief period working at Morpeth, Mitchell was appointed as a tutor in English at the University of Sydney in 1934. Two years later, he graduated with a masters and the university medal. On 18 August 1937 he married his childhood sweetheart Una Marion White at the Methodist Church, Morpeth. A few days later they embarked for England. With Holmes’s support, the University of Sydney granted Mitchell a leave of absence to undertake overseas study. He obtained his doctorate and a diploma in phonetics at University College, London (1939), studying with phonetician Daniel Jones and literary scholars Albert Hughes Smith and Raymond Wilson Chambers. The latter, under whose supervision he worked on William Langland’s Middle English poem Piers Plowman (c. 1377), considered Mitchell ‘in the front range of rising English philologists’ (Chambers 1940).

The Mitchells returned to Sydney in August 1939. They settled at Lane Cove and Alec went back to lecturing. He quickly gained a reputation as an inspiring teacher, and in May 1947 succeeded Holme as the McCaughey chair of early English literature and language. Mitchell was also co-editor of the magazine Southerly (1941–44), president of the Sydney University Union (1948) and staff association (c. 1958), and chair of the professorial board (1960). In August 1961 he was appointed deputy vice-chancellor (1961–65).

In the 1940s and 1950s Mitchell gained a prominent public profile by campaigning for ‘the recognition and acceptance of Australian English’ (Peterson 1995, 12A). To this end, he wrote numerous articles and letters to the press, delivered public lectures, and often spoke on radio. ‘I had a lot of fun at this,’ he later remembered (Mitchell 1967, 3699). His views on the Australian pronunciation of the English language had first developed during his studies in London. In April 1940 he delivered a lecture to the Australian English Association, which analysed and defended the often-criticised Australian accent. It was issued as a booklet before being revised and published as The Pronunciation of English in Australia in 1946. The book was an early ‘attempt at analysing the phonology of Australian English,’ which he declared to be ‘not a careless distortion of any other variety of English, but rather a variety in its own right’ (Mitchell, in Delbridge 2001, 311). His research on the Australian accent was foundational, especially his categorisation of its three main variations: educated, general, broad. He also became involved with the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Standing Committee on Spoken English, advising on speech and pronunciation on radio, which shaped the idea of an acceptable public voice.

With Arthur Delbridge, in 1965 Mitchell published a ground-breaking sociolinguistic analysis, The Speech of Australian Adolescents. His other publications included The Use of English (1954), Spoken English (1957), and The Australian Accent (1961). He served on the council of the Australian National University (1960–63) and was a foundation fellow (1956) as well as chairman (1959–62) of the Australian Humanities Research Council.

In September 1960 Mitchell was appointed to a State committee of enquiry into higher education in New South Wales. The committee recommended the establishment of a third tertiary institution in metropolitan Sydney. In August 1963 the State government announced that a new university–later named Macquarie–would begin teaching at a site at North Ryde in 1967. An interim council began work in January 1964 with Mitchell as chairman of the academic committee and deputy chairman of the council. Later that year he was invited to become the university’s first vice-chancellor. Following a strenuous period of construction, teaching began on 6 March 1967.

Known for ‘his quiet demeanour,’ Mitchell was described as having a ‘preference for collegial forms of decision-making’ and an ‘understated, even subdued style’ (Mansfield and Hutchinson 1992, 36). At the same time, his contemporary Gerald Wilkes remembered that ‘there was a degree of metal in his nature’ (1997, 78). In his early days as vice-chancellor, he supported a flexible and fluid student study program that explored affinities between conventionally separate disciplines. Later, he faced significant difficulties, including financial restrictions arising from a change of government in May 1965. He came under criticism in July–August 1974 after calling the police to remove students who were occupying university buildings, including his office in the chancery, leading to the arrest of sixty-five students. They had been protesting the university’s refusal to increase student council fees, a proposal to establish an exclusive staff club in the union building, and the addition of an emergency clause to the Students’ Union’s constitution, which they saw as undermining student rights. Their actions were typical of the wider radical movement on university campuses at this time. Mitchell had refused to negotiate under duress with a mass meeting of students, a decision that angered protestors. He survived the furore, but his term ended in December 1975. That same year, he was appointed CBE for services to education.

In retirement Mitchell encouraged Delbridge, Susan Butler, and their colleagues in the preparation of the first Macquarie Dictionary in 1981. He was also a supervisor and mentor to W. S. (Bill) Ramson, founder of the Australian National Dictionary (1988). Retirement gave Mitchell more time for fishing, golf, gardening, and writing. He published a history of the Sydney Rotary Club, where he served as president (1973–74) and district governor (1977–78), and returned to research, including working on a history of Australian English. It was unfinished when he died on 19 September 1997 at his home in Lane Cove. He was survived by his wife and daughters, Deirdre and Anne, and his ashes were interred at the Northern Suburbs crematorium. John Brack’s double portrait of Mitchell and Macquarie University’s first chancellor, Sir Garfield Barwick, was completed in 1978.