John McWhorter

John McWhorter at the International Symposium On Malay/Indonesian Linguistics conference in Leiden

John Hamilton McWhorter V (1965– ) is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. During the period he was active as a professor of linguistics, his research specialty was how creole languages form.

Early life

McWhorter was born and raised in Philadelphia. He attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia, and after tenth grade was accepted to Simon's Rock College, where he earned an A.A. degree. Later, he attended Rutgers University and received a B.A. in French in 1985. He received a master's degree in American Studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1993 from Stanford University.

Career

After graduation McWhorter was an associate professor of linguistics at Cornell University from 1993 to 1995 before taking up a position as associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1995 until 2003. He left that position to become a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and a columnist for the New York Sun. Since 2008, he has been a lecturer at Columbia University.

He has published a number of books on linguistics and on race relations and makes regular public radio and television appearances on related subjects. He has spoken many times on National Public Radio and is an occasional contributor on Bloggingheads.tv. He has appeared twice on Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, once in the profanity episode in his capacity as a linguistics professor, and again in the slavery reparations episode for his political views and knowledge of race relations. He is also the author of the courses titled "Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language" and "Story of Human Language" for The Teaching Company. His 2003 Authentically Black has been interview-reviewed on booknotes.org.

Political Views

McWhorter characterizes himself as "a cranky liberal Democrat". In support of this description, he states that while he "disagree[s] sustainedly with many of the tenets of the Civil Rights orthodoxy," he also "supports Barack Obama, reviles the War on Drugs, supports gay marriage, never voted for George Bush and writes of Black English as coherent speech". McWhorter additionally maintains that the conservative Manhattan Institute, for which he has worked, "has always been hospitable to Democrats".

Recently on Chris Hayes' weekend program "Up" McWhorter acknowledged his early support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, stating he was convinced of the need to depose Sadaam Hussein by Colin Powell's U.N. speech.

Bibliography

• 1997: Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis ISBN 0820433128
• 1998: Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English ISBN 0738204463
• 2000: The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages ISBN 0520219996
• 2000: Spreading the Word : Language and Dialect in America ISBN 0325001987
• 2000: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
• 2001: The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language ISBN 006052085X
• 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 ISBN 1592400167
• 2005: Defining Creole ISBN 0195166698
• 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 ISBN 1592403743
• 2008: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English ISBN 1592403956
• 2011: What Language Is (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be) ISBN 9781592406258

External links

• Biography at Manhattan Institute
• New York Sun columns
• McWhorter's blog at The New Republic
• Cato Institute Podcast: Race Relations and the War on Drugs
• Affirmative Action at Berkeley article, debate on affirmative action
• TheRoot.com article about Black culture identity
• Video interviews and discussions with McWhorter on bloggingheads.tv
• Los Angeles Times review of All about the Beat
• Booknotes interview with McWhorter on Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority, March 2, 2003.
• In Depth interview with McWhorter, March 2, 2008