John Rickford: Using Linguistics to Fight Dialect Prejudice in Courtrooms and Beyond

J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University Dr. John Rickford is a linguist whose research focuses on the relationships between linguistic variation and change and social structure. He is particularly interested in language and ethnicity, social class and style, language variation and change, pidgin and creole language, African American Vernacular English, and the application of linguistics to educational issues. He received a bachelor’s degree in sociolinguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Rickford is the author and editor of numerous articles and books, including African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications; Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English (winner of an American Book Award), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation; Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century; Language, Culture and Caribbean Identity; and African American, Creole and Other Vernacular Englishes: A Bibliographic Resource.