The British Empire Medal, a prestigious British honour awarded by King Charles III, is to be presented to Jaroslav Peprník, a leading Czech scholar of English and American studies, author of monographs and textbooks on the English language and the Anglophone world, and co-founder of the Department of English Studies at Palacký University.
Professor Jaroslav Peprník of the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University, is a leading figure in Czech English studies, whose career, scholarly work and teaching have been an inspiration to generations of students and colleagues. He has been associated with the Faculty of Arts at Palacký University since 1954. As early as 1948, he attended a summer school in London and travelled extensively throughout Britain. His life has been characterised by a belief in democratic values and a deep commitment to the discipline to which he has devoted his entire professional life. He will receive the British Empire Medal (BEM) in recognition of his long-standing work and contribution to the development of Czech-British relations.
British Empire Medal (BEM) is a British state honour awarded for significant service to society or the public. Its official name is the British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service. Recipients of this medal may use the abbreviation BEM after their name.
„Je jen velmi málo cizinců, kteří toto ocenění získají. Loni BEM obdrželo pětadvacet lidí z celého světa. Z Čechů ji historicky získal zřejmě pouze československý voják a bojovník u Tobruku za druhé světové války Augustin Švub, o nikom jiném nevíme. Pan profesor je v tomto ohledu unikát,“ uvedl Otakar Fojt, odborník na vědeckou diplomacii, mezinárodní spolupráci ve výzkumu a inovace z Britského velvyslanectví v Praze.
“There are very few foreigners who receive this honour. Last year, twenty-five people from around the world were awarded the BEM. Historically, the only Czech to have received it was apparently Augustin Švub, a Czechoslovak soldier and combatant at Tobruk during the Second World War; we know of no one else. ‘The professor is unique in this respect,’ said Otakar Fojt, an expert on science diplomacy, international research collaboration and innovation at the British Embassy in Prague.
Professor Peprník has been working at Palacký University for more than seventy years and has left an indelible mark on its history and in the memories of many generations of students and colleagues. Through his erudition, humility and passion for language, he has inspired hundreds of students, many of whom are now teachers themselves. His academic work focuses primarily on three areas: teaching, textbook authoring, and compiling materials on the history of contacts between Czechs and English-speaking countries. He is also characterised by an exceptionally broad knowledge of the literature, customs and culture of the English-speaking world. Through his work in lexicology, he has established himself as one of the leading Czech specialists in the field. Furthermore, Peprník’s textbooks have for many years been among the core materials used for teaching English at Czech universities and secondary schools.
Jaroslav Peprník has received numerous awards. In 2003, he was awarded the City of Olomouc Prize, and in 2023, he received the highest ministerial honour from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic – a first-class medal, which was presented to him by the Minister of Education at Palacký University. Last year, he also received the František Palacký Award at Palacký University in recognition of his lifetime contribution.
Jaroslav Peprník (* 1927) is a graduate in English and History from the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno. He completed his studies in 1950 with a dissertation entitled Nominální tendence v moderní anglické próze (Nominal Tendencies in Modern English Prose). He has been working at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University, since 1954; at the Department of English Studies, he specialises in contemporary English language, particularly lexicology. Peprník’s first textbook, Angličtina pro lékaře (English for Doctors), was published in 1966; it has been reprinted several times and was also adopted by the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague. This was later followed by the textbook Angličtina pro filology I–II (1984, 1987) (English for Philologists). Thanks to his work on the Slovníku amerikanismů (Dictionary of Americanisms), he became the only Czech to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1969, which included a six-month stay in the USA. Another of his successful textbooks was Angličtina pro jazykové školy (English for Language Schools). He was only able to obtain the academic title of Candidate of Philological Sciences in 1986, based on his candidate’s thesis, Sémantika pojmenování barev v angličtině a češtině (The Semantics of Colour Terms in English and Czech). He was not allowed to obtain his habilitation until after 1989. The focus of his academic work was research into the Czech lands’ contacts with the Anglophone world, which culminated in the publications Anglie očima české literatury (2001) (England through the Eyes of Czech Literature), Amerika očima české literatury (2002) (America through the Eyes of Czech Literature), Češi a anglofonní svět: kontakty a percepce (2012) (The Czechs and the Anglophone World: Contacts and Perceptions) and Anglofonní svět a Češi (2016) (The Anglophone World and the Czechs). For the wider public, he wrote an outline of the history of Britain and the USA, Illustrated Realia (2004), and an anthology of short texts drawn from The Times, Journalistic English (2005). After 1990, he devoted considerable effort to revising the English passages in Oldřich Švarný’s textbook Hovorová čínština v příkladech (Colloquial Chinese through Examples) and to reviewing Josef Fronek’s Great Czech–English Dictionary. In 2021, UP Publishing House published his memoirs, Vzpomínky anglisty (Memoirs of an English Scholar).