John McWhorter Biography
John McWhorter is a linguist from the United States working as an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history. He is the author of a number of books on language and interactions with race, and in several popular publications, his work has appeared. His research focuses on the formation of Creole languages and the transition in language grammar as a result of socio-historical phenomena.
How old is John McWhorter? – Age
Dr. McWhorter is 56 years old as of October 6, 2021. He was born in 1965 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
John McWhorter Family
He is an Orphan. His father John Hamilton McWhorter IV, who died in 1996, was a college administrator, and his mother Schelysture Gordon McWhorter, who died in 2011, taught social work at Temple University. He has one known sibling by the name Holly McWhorter.
Who is John McWhorter’s wife? – Wife
He is not married and has not been rumored to be in any relationship.
John McWhorter Education
He attended Philadelphia’s Friends Select Academy and was admitted to Simon’s Rock College after tenth grade, where he received an A.A. Oh. Degree. Later, he attended the University of Rutgers and earned a B.A. 1985 in French. He earned a master’s degree from New York University in American Studies and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University in 1993.
John McWhorter Linguistics
McWhorter is a critic of the hypothesis of Sapir-Whorf. He believes that languages appear toward ambiguity and irregularity normally. He has also been a supporter of a hypothesis that because of violent migrations from the neighboring island of Sulawesi, distinct languages on the island of Flores undergone change. McWhorter argued that alternate renditions of English rather than degraded ones should be called colloquial constructions, such as the current uses of “like” and “totally,”. In January 2017, he was one of the speakers of the inaugural Public Lectures on Language series at the Linguistic Society of America. He is a member of the American Philosopher-Linguistic Association and the American Academy of Linguistics. A book on the roots of words is The Language Fraud.
John McWhorter Columbia
McWhorter is a Columbia University professor of English and Comparative Literature. He is the author of a number of books on race relations and linguistics. McWhorter was a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and a contributing writer at The New Republic.
He’s been on Penn & Teller twice: Nonsense! Once in his role as professor of linguistics, and again for his political views and understanding of race relations in the slavery reparations episode. He has also been on National Public Radio and with Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s Up. He talks frequently at TED conventions and on public radio and television, including with Bill Maher on The Colbert Report and Real-Time. From 1995 until 2003, he was an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is currently writing to The Atlantic and hosts the Lexicon Valley podcast for Slate. He formerly worked as the New Republic’s associate editor and contributed to Time and The Wall Street Journal. He is a regular commenter on Bloggingheads. tv, and also talks on public radio.
John McWhorter Books
Aside from teaching literature, Dr. McWhorter is also a book author. He has written a number of books and articles that have been featured on major publications over the years on interaction with race and language. Some of his work include:
♦ 1997: Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis
♦ 1998: Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a “Pure” Standard English
♦ 2000: Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America
♦ 2000: The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages
♦ 2000: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
♦ 2001: The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
♦ 2003: Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority
♦ 2003: Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care
♦ 2005: Defining Creole
♦ 2005: Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America
♦ 2007: Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars
♦ 2008: All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America
♦ 2008: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
♦ 2011: Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity: Why Do Languages Undress?
♦ 2012: A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole
♦ 2014: The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language
♦ 2015: Columns in The Atlantic
♦ 2016: Words on the Move: Why English Won’t – and Can’t – Sit Still
♦ 2017: Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America’s Lingua Franca
♦ 2018: The Creole Debate
♦ 2021: Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever
