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John
McWhorter
John
H. McWhorter is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley. Born in Philadelphia, he earned a master's degree in
American Studies at NYU and received his Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford
University in 1993. He
specializes in pidgin and creole languages, particularly of the Caribbean, and
is the author of Toward a New Model of Creole Genesis, which is an
introduction to language change, language mixture, and dialects worldwide for
the general public. He has been interviewed widely on language use, the
Ebonics controversy, and modern race issues in America by leading programs and
publications including The Today Show, Dateline NBC, National Public Radio, The
New York Times, and Newsweek. Professor McWhorter’s most recent
book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2001), is an
examination into the cultural problems facing African American students that
are generated from within the community. Some of his other books include The
Word On The Street: Fact And Fiction About American English (1998), and The
Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Creole Languages (2000).