How I Fell in Love with Language, Linguistics, and “Activist Sociolinguistics”: An Autobiographical Essay

My autobiographical essay begins with a brief section on my high school experience, then goes into more substantive detail about my research and publications over the past 55 years at the universities I attended (University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Pennsylvania) or at which I worked (University of Guyana, Stanford University) and since I retired in 2019. I mention my key mentors and influencers, including Roger Keesing, J. Herman Blake, Robert Le Page, and William Labov. And I identify some of the foci of my research over the years, including vowel laxing in Guyanese personal pronouns, prior creolization in the history of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the Ebonics controversy, stylistic variation in sociolinguistics, quotative all , and racial disparities in automated speech recognition. Finally, I focus on “Activist Sociolinguistics,” including fighting for increased success for AAVE and other vernacular speakers in schools and for increased justice for them in the courtroom.