William Alexander Stewart
William Alexander Stewart | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 12, 1930 Honolulu, Hawaii, United States |
| Died | March 25, 2002 (aged 71) Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Creoles, sociolinguistics |
William Alexander Stewart (September 12, 1930 – March 25, 2002) was an American linguist specializing in creoles, known particularly for his work on African American Vernacular English.
Biography
[edit]Stewart was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Scottish parents, and grew up speaking four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hawaiian). At the age of 8, he moved with his family to California. His parents were killed in a car crash one year later, and he was raised by his father's parents. He served as an army translator before enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees.[1][2]
Work
[edit]Working for the Center for Applied Linguistics, Stewart undertook pioneering work on creoles in the Caribbean in the early 1960s. In 1965, he discovered that reading problems of some African-American children were caused not by vocabulary or pronunciation, but by differences between the grammar of African American Vernacular English and standard English.[1][2] In the late 1960s, he explored the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, introducing the notions of polycentric languages,[3] autonomy and heteronomy.[4]
In 1952, he was drafted into the United States Army and served in Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany as a translator.[2] He became a corporal.
He was on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York for over 25 years.[2]
See also
[edit]
- Standard language
- Language planning
- Post-creole continuum
- Monogenetic theory of pidgins
- List of diglossic regions
References
[edit]- ^ a b Saxon, Wolfgang (April 10, 2002). "W. A. Stewart, Linguist, 71; Studied Ebonics". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c d "Linguist William Stewart Dies – Pioneer in Studies of Afro American Vernacular English" (Press release). City University of New York. April 1, 2002.
- ^ Ammon, Ulrich (1995). Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz: das Problem der nationalen Varietäten [German Language in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: The Problem of National Varieties] (in German). Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 45–46. ISBN 3-11-014753-X. OCLC 33981055.
- ^ Stewart, William A. (1968). "A Sociolinguistic Typology for Describing National Multilingualism". In Fishman, Joshua A (ed.). Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton. pp. 529–545. doi:10.1515/9783110805376.531. ISBN 978-3-11-080537-6. OCLC 306499.
