This comprehensive collection is the first full book-length volume to bring together writing focused around and inspired by the work of John Rickford and his role in sociolinguistic research over the last four decades. Featuring contributions from more than 40 leading scholars in the field, the volume integrates both historical and current perspectives on key topics in Rickfords body of work at the intersection of language and society, highlighting the influence of his work from diverse fields such as sociolinguistics, stylistics, creole studies, and language and education.
The volume is organized around four sections, each representing one of the fundamental strands in Rickfords scholarship over the course of his career, bookended by short vignettes that feature stories from the field to more broadly contextualize his intellectual legacy:
Language contact from a sociolinguistic and sociohistorical point of view
The political ramifications of linguistic heterogeneity
The stylistic implications of language variation and change
The educational implications of linguistic heterogeneity and social injustice
Taken together, The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford serves as a platform to showcase Rickfords pioneering contributions to the field and, in turn, to socially reflective linguistic research more generally, making this key reading for students and researchers in sociolinguistics, creole studies, language and style, and language and education.
This comprehensive collection is the first full book-length volume to bring together writing focused around and inspired by the work of John Rickford and his role in sociolinguistic research over the last four decades.
Table of contents
Introduction
Introduction to the volume
Renée Blake and Isabelle Buchstaller
The makings of a linguist: John R. Rickfords education in his native Guyana
Ewart Thomas
Exploring language contact from a sociolinguistic and socio-historical point
of view
Introduction
John Victor Singler
In the Fishermans net: Language contact in a sociolinguistics context
Shelome Gooden
African- Indian- American South- and Caribbean worlds: connecting with John
R. Rickfords language contact research
Rajend Mesthrie
Ideophones in Guyanese speech: An inventory of depictive lexemes and
implications for (de)creolization
Walter Edwards and Onjel Williams
Systemic linguistic discrimination and disenfranchisement in the Creolophone
Caribbean: The case of the St. Lucian legal system
Ian Robertson and Sandra Evans
The English words in Sranan: From where, from whom and how?
André Sherriah, Hubert Devonish, Ewart Thomas, and Nicole Creanza
Another look at the creolist hypothesis of AAVE origins
Don Winford
Rickfords list of African American English grammatical features: An update
Arthur Spears
The aks of its day?: Revisiting invariant am in Early Black English
John McWhorter
Viewing ex-slave narratives from a different angle: Variation and discourse
Lisa Green and Ayana Whitmal
Race, class, and linguistic camouflage: Remote past BEEN and the divergence
debate revisited
Tracey Weldon
The sociolinguistic ramifications of social injustice: The case of Black ASL
Robert Bayley, Ceil Lucas, Joseph Hill, and Carolyn McCaskill
Ethnolinguistic infusion at a Sephardic adventure camp
Sarah Bunin Benor
The political ramifications of linguistic heterogeneity
Introduction
Alicia Beckford Wassink
Giving voice to despair and defiance: Rickford in Guyana
William Labov
American mestizos in the Philippines: Mongrelization and mixedness in
American colonial media discourse
Bonnie McElhinny
Family matters: Seminal Rickford contributions to Kinesics, Education,
Linguistics, and Law
John Baugh
Are you Soul Folk, Baby? Black English, struggle, and consciousness in the
1960s and 1970s
Russell J. Rickford
We should declare AAL a separate language, although theres no scientific
reason (not) to
Ralph Fasold
Where sociolinguistics and speech science meet: The physiological and
acoustic consequences of underbite in a multilectal speaker of African
American English
Alicia Beckford Wassink
Credibility without intelligibility: Implications for hearing vernacular
speakers
Lauren Hall-Lew, Inźs Paiva Couceiro and Amie Fars
Using pharyngeals out of context: Linguistic stereotypes in parodic
performances of Mizrahi Hebrew speakers
Roey Gafter
Sociolinguists trying to make a difference: race, research and linguistic
activism
Mary Bucholtz
Linguistic justice: Evaluating the speech of asylum claimants
Peter Patrick
Linguistics on trial, under arrest, and in prison: On sharing sociolinguistic
and forensic linguistic knowledge with attorneys, law enforcement
practitioners, and incarcerated persons
Natalie Schilling
Implicit sociolinguistic bias and social justice
Walt Wolfram and Karen Eisenhauer
Forging new ways of hearing diversity: The politics of linguistic
heterogeneity in the work of John R. Rickford
Sharese King and Jonathan Rosa
IV The stylistic implications of language variation and change
Introduction
Edward Finegan
Indexical obsolescence
Penelope Eckert
Age grading, style, and language change: A lifespan perspective
Gillian Sankoff
Style: The presentation of self in everyday life to an empty theater?
Dennis Preston
Pidgin, pride and prejudice: Race, gender and stylistic codeswitching in
Nigerian stand-up comedy
Rudolf Gaudio
Id better schedule an MRI: The linguistic stylization of white ethnicity
in comedy Carmen Fought
The N word as an emblem of survival identity in African American comedy
Jacquelyn Rahman
Style in motion: Lectal focusing in an African American sermon
Devyani Sharma, Lars Hinrichs, Tracy Conner, and Andrea Kortenhoven
Topic-restricting as far as revisited
Robin Melnick and Thomas Wasow
Dont neglect the situation but dont stop there either! On
intra-individual variation
Frans Gregersen
V. The educational implications of linguistic heterogeneity and social
injustice
Introduction
Julie Sweetland and Angela Rickford
The Effects of culturally relevant texts and questions on the reading
comprehension of students of color
Angela E. Rickford
Vernaculars Symbols of solidarity and truth in literature
Hazel Simmons-McDonald
Transnationalism, social networks, and heterogeneous language practices: A
case study of a New York-based Jamaican student
Shondel Nero
Vetting the Versatility Approach
Julie Sweetland
John Rickford and social justice for speakers of Vernacular English
Jeff Siegel
I, too, am America: African American Language, #BlackLivesMatter, and
Critical (Socio)Linguistics
Sonja Lanehart
A Pedagogy of Linguistic Justice: John Rickford in the classroom and the
field
Django Paris
VI. Vignettes
John R. Rickford back in the day
Gregory Guy
Tribute to a colleague
Tom Wasow
Putting the humanity into linguistics
Dan Jurafsky
Notes on mentorship
Isla Kristina Flores-Bayer
The Consummate Teacher
Sarah Roberts
Ode to John R. Rickford
Christine Théberge Rafal
Notes on crossdisciplinary mentorship
Janina Fenigsen
Tribute to a scholar
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Spoken Soul: Tribute to a seminal work
Geneva Smitherman and H. Samy Alim
John R. Rickfords influence on language and practice
Toya Wyatt
Tribute from an educator
Noma LeMoine
Black Lives Matter
Michel DeGraff
Renée Blake is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, USA.
Isabelle Buchstaller is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
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