John McWhorter author photo
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John McWhorter

Né(e): October 06, 1965 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

John McWhorter is a linguist, Columbia University associate professor, and New York Times opinion columnist whose work centers on language change, Black English, race, and culture. His notable books include The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, Nine Nasty Words, and Woke Racism, two of them New York Times bestsellers. ((https://www.ted.com/speakers/john_mcwhorter?utm_source=openai))

Biographie et Parcours de l'Auteur

John McWhorter grew up in Philadelphia in a book-filled household, the child of parents who pursued advanced degrees while he was young. He attended integrated Quaker and Montessori schools, and his fascination with language began very early: hearing another language as a child made him want to know how speech could take multiple forms. That curiosity matured into formal study, first at Rutgers, then NYU, then Stanford, where he trained as a linguist and worked on creole languages. His early academic career included Berkeley, but a major turning point came when he moved into public argument as well as scholarship, writing on race and culture for magazines, newspapers, and think-tank audiences before joining Columbia, where he has taught linguistics, American studies, and music history.

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Citations

quote
Broadening and narrowing happen, but a more general characterization of words over time is that they have a way of just oozing around
-5 words that don’t mean what they used to mean
quote
It’s just that now we don’t only talk with our mouths, we talk with our fingers
-LOL is its own language
quote
What we’re seeing is an increasingly Anglophone world and an increasingly oral, rather than written world
-Living Language
quote
A language wants to have both a singular and a plural "you."
-Pronoun Trouble
quote
I’m finding that talking into people’s ears is the new medium that reaches smart people
-The Essentials
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The language will always keep changing
-Bill Moyers Journal interview
quote
I want to get across something much more specific, which is that linguistically there is nothing unsophisticated or broken about this dialect
-English in Black and White
quote
Language death is a natural thing, just like species death is a natural thing
-John McWhorter on key lessons from linguistics

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Voix de la Communauté

"No one could make better sense of this part of speech than our national treasure, John McWhorter"

Steven Pinker

"John McWhorter shows brilliantly how the 'nastiest' words can teach us about the dynamic and unruly nature of all language"

Joe Moran

"John McWhorter takes a small-seeming subject, the pronoun, and with his unique mix of charm, linguistic erudition, and common sense, explains it all to us"

Adam Gopnik

"John McWhorter ... is one of the nation's most insightful analysts of race and culture"

Investor's Business Daily

"Honest commentary about racial controversies is rare, and John McWhorter is a writer who can be counted on to provide it"

Jason L. Riley

"John McWhorter's Nine Nasty Words is a grand tour through the history of the profanities we (sometimes) abhor and (sometimes) revel in"

Benjamin Dreyer

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