Dr. McWhorter was a participant in Closer to Truth: 

Show 104, "New Communities for the New Millennium?"
Show 110, "Whatever Happened to Ethics and Civility?"
 

John McWhorter is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also held an appointment in the Department of African-American Studies. He was Assistant Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Cornell University from 1994-1995.  He earned his PhD in linguistics at Stanford University in 1993, since then concentrating on language change and language contact, with particular focus upon pidgin and creole languages. He was widely consulted by the media during the Ebonics controversy in 1996-7, and is the author of The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable About American English, appearing in paperback from Perseus in the fall of 2000. His other books include The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages and Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America. In the fall of 2000, his book Losing the Race: Self-sabotage in Black America appeared from the Free Press, addressing sociopolitical issues such as race and education; he has discussed the topics covered in that book on Good Morning America, ABC News' Conversations With...; Politically Incorrect, The Montel Williams Show, 20/20, and was a recent cover story for The New Republic on black TV. He has been featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and is a contributing editor of City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's political opinion magazine.

Academic History:

Postdoctoral Work: University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1993-1994.

Doctoral Study: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA., 1988-1993. Ph.D in Linguistics. Dissertation: "Towards a New Model of Genesis: Competing Processes in the Birth of Saramaccan Creole". Committee: John R. Rickford, Elizabeth C. Traugott, and Thomas Wasow.

Graduate Study: New York University, New York City, NY, 1985-1987. M.A. in American Civilization. Thesis: "Scott Joplin and the Operatic Form in Pre-World War I America".

Undergraduate Study: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ., 1983-1985. B.A. with High Honors in French and Romance Languages.

Undergraduate Study: Simon's Rock Early College of Bard, Great Barrington, MA., 1981-1983. A.A. with distinction.

Research/Teaching Interests

Primary Research Interests:

1) Creole languages: synchronic symptoms of creolization and language contact; implications of creole language typology for the characterization of the language faculty; the origin of plantation creole languages.

2) Historical linguistics: grammaticalization, diachronic morphology and syntax, sociohistorical linguistics, language contact.

3) Research languages: Various European-based creole languages, especially Saramaccan Creole and other Suriname creoles.

Associate Editor, Language (1999 - present)

Editorial Board, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages (1996 - present)

Presidential Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, 1998. Grant to allow a full year's sabbatical with full pay, Spring - Fall 2000.

Hellman Family Faculty Fund Grant, University of California, Berkeley, 1997. Grant to study Martiniquan and French Guianese Creole in the summer of 1999.

Committee on Research Grant, University of California at Berkeley, 1996. Grant to travel to archives in London, Paris and The Hague in summer 1996 for sociological and sociolinguistic research on European trade settlements in colonial-era West Africa.

Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, 1993-94.

Whiting Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities, Stanford University, 1992-1993. Grant for fifth-year study to complete dissertation.

Stanford Institute for International Studies Travel Grant, 1992. Grant of travel and research costs to do research on documents in early Saramaccan Creole in the Rijksarchief in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship, 1990-1991. Supplementary stipend and travel grant, utilized in conjunction with one year of residency at the Stanford Humanities Center.

Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship, Stanford University, 1988-1992. Full support for four years for pursuit of PhD in linguistics.

Minority Fellowship and Internship, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, spring 1987. Stipend for three-month research assistantship.

Walker Scholarship, New York University, 1985-1987. Tuition and stipend for pursuit of Master's Degree in American Civilization.

High Departmental Honors for Senior Thesis, Rutgers University French Department, Rutgers University, 1985. Thesis: "Phonological Evolution from Latin to French as Evidenced in La Chanson de Roland".

Language Abilities

Speaking and reading proficiency in French, Spanish and German; strong reading proficiency in Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Esperanto; basic reading proficiency in Hebrew; basic speaking and reading proficiency in Japanese.

Books

(in preparation) A Natural History of Language.
(2000) Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York: Free Press.
(2000) Spreading the Word: Languages and Dialects in America. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann Press.
(2000) The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Creole Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
(2000) (editor) Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(1998) The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable about American English. New York: Plenum.
(1997) Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis. New York: Peter Lang.

Articles

(in preparation) (with Mikael Parkvall) Pas tout à fait du français: Une étude créole.
(in preparation) Creole Transplantation: A Source of Solutions to Resistant Anomalies.
(under review) The Rest of the Story: Why Inflectional Loss Undercharacterizes Creolization.
(under review) The World's Simplest Grammars are Creole Grammars.
(forthcoming) Strange Bedfellows: Recovering the Origin of Black English: Review Article of The English History of African American English, ed. by Shana Poplack. Diachronica.
(forthcoming) Defining Creole as a Synchronic Term. Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, ed. by Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh and Edgar Schneider. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(forthcoming) The Suriname Creoles: Evaluating Afrogenesis and Genetic Relationships. Interface 3.
1999d. Skeletons in the Closet: Anomalies in the Behavior of the Saramaccan Copula. Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse, ed. by John R. Rickford and Suzanne Romaine, 121-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1999c. Bringing Gender Into Creole Studies. Gender and Belief Systems (Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Women and Language Conference), ed. by Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen, 501-8. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
1999b. The Afrogenesis Hypothesis of Plantation Creole Origin. Spreading the Word: The Issue of Diffusion among the Atlantic Creoles, ed. by Magnus Huber and Mikael Parkvall, 111-52. London: University of Westminster Press.
1999a. A Creole by any Other Name: Streamlining the Terminology in Creolistics. Spreading the Word: The Issue of Diffusion among the Atlantic Creoles, ed. by Magnus Huber and Mikael Parkvall, 5-28. London: University of Westminster Press.
1998. Identifying the creole prototype: vindicatinga typological class.  Language 74:788-818.
1997d. Lost in Transmission: A Case for the Independent Emergence of the Atlantic Creole Copula. The Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles, ed. by Arthur Spears and Donald Winford, 241-61. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
1997c. Wasting Energy on an Illusion: Six Months Later. The Black Scholar 27:2-5.
1997b. Wasting Energy on an Illusion. The Black Scholar 27:9-14.
1997a. (with Judy Kegl) Perspectives on an Emerging Language: Creolization and Critical Periods. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Child Language Research Forum, ed. by Eve V. Clark, 15-38. Palo Alto: CSLI.
1996d. (with John Rickford) Language Contact and Language Restructuring. Entry in Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 238-56. Oxford: Blackwell.
1996c. It Happened at Cormantin: Locating the Origin of the Atlantic English-based Creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 12:59-102.
1996b. A Deep Breath and a Second Wind: The Substrate Hypothesis Reassessed. Anthropological Linguistics 38:461-94.
1996a. The Diachrony of Predicate Negation in Saramaccan Creole: Synchronic and Typological Implications. Studies in Language 20:285-311.
1995d. Looking Into the Void: Zero Copula in the Creole Mesolect. American Speech 70:339-60.
1995c. Sisters Under the Skin: A Case for Genetic Relationship Between the Atlantic English-based Creoles.Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 10:289-333.
1995b. Creole Studies and Historical Linguistics: Renewing Our Vows. Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1995, ed. by Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Joshua S. Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser and Ju Namkung, 450-64. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
1995a. The Scarcity of Spanish-based Creoles Explained. Language in Society 24:213-44.

Media Contributions/Radio

Oakland Ebonics Debate:

Talk Shows: National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, KALW San Francisco (NPR Affiliate)'s Citivisions, KOA - Denver, WPHT - Philadelphia, KPFA - Berkeley, many others

Interviews: KPFA - Berkeley, KAMC - Boston (NPR Affiliate), Swedish National Public Radio

Losing the Race:

KGO San Francisco, The Pete Wilson Show; BBC Morning Show; BBC Evening Show; WNYC New York, New York and Company; Radio America, New York, Gateways; WOR, New York, Bob Grant; WLIB, New York, Wake Up New York; Dame Gallagher Network, The Mike Gallagher Show; KSFO San Francisco, The Lee Rodgers Show; Wisconsin Public Radio, Conversations with Kathleen; WHAT Philadelphia, In Pursuit of Truth; KSFO San Francisco, The Michael Savage Show; KVON Napa, Morning Edition; National Public Radio, Morning Edition; KRLD Arlington, TX: The Charlie Jones Show; WPFW Washington, DC, Let’s Talk About It; Wings Productions, Annapolis, MD, Capital Conversations; NBC/Mutual, Arlington, VA, The Jim Bohannon Show; WOLB Baltimore, The Larry Young Morning Show.

Other Radio Guest Appearances

KPFA Radio, September 8, 1995 (The "N"-word).
KPIX, September 3, 1996 radio (the use of Black English in education).
National Public Radio, KQED San Francisco, Forum with Michael Krasny. "Idioms", April 2000.
National Public Radio, KQED San Francisco, Forum with Michael Krasny: "Language Change", February 2000.
Documentary Interview on African-American Vernacular English, BBC World Service documentary "English Around the World", March 1995.

Media Contributions/Television

Oakland Ebonics Debate:

Interviews: Dateline NBC, The Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Up-to- the-Minute News, Fox News' Schneider Report, Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, various interviews on San Francisco channels 2 and 7, BBC World News.

Talk Show: Rolonda, January 29, 1997

Losing the Race:

Good Morning America (8/15/2000); Fox News, The O’Reilly Factor (8/2000); The Edge with Paula Zahn (8/2000); KRON Daybreak with Phil Matier (8/2000); News Channel 8, Washington, DC, Afternoon Report; Conversations With…, ABC News (9/2000).

Television Discussion Program Guest, Closer to Truth (PBS): Episodes on "New Communities in the New Millennium", "Whatever Happened to Ethics and Civility?", taped May 1999.

Other Television Appearances

Bay TV, San Francisco, with Michael Krasny, "The Language Wars", July 2000.

Documentary Appearance: "Silent Children, New Language", for the Horizon series on the BBC -- extended interviews and commentary, taped December 1996.

Print Media

"The Ultimate Emancipation" Newsweek Magazine, (March 5, 2001).

"What's Holding Blacks Back?" The City Journal, (Winter, 2001).

"Are Blacks Biased Against Braininess?", Time Magazine, (August 7, 2000).

"Explaining the Black Education Gap" (Excerpt from Losing the Race). The Wilson Quarterly 24:73-92 (summer 2000).

Web Page Essay: "The Demise of Affirmative Action at UC Berkeley: Dissecting the Stalemate", Edge web page, August 1998. (Responses by Daniel C. Dennett, Howard Gardner, and Richard Dawkins.)

Newspaper Editorial: "What's Missing in the Diversity Debate", Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1998.

Episode Transcripts: Closer to Truth: Challenging Current Belief (Companion Volume to Television Series) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).

Newspaper/Magazine Quotes

"Language and the Law", Los Angeles Times, 10/31/98.
"Cracking the Code of Teenspeak", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/7/99.
"Future Imperfect", Boston Globe, 3/14/99.
"Linguistischer Urknall", Der Spiegel 3/2000.

Oakland Ebonics Controversy:

Interviews: Newsweek, The New York Times, San Jose Mercury, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The Oakland Tribune, The Associated Press.
Invited Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 1996.

Theatre Performance History

Performer,The Centennial Gaieties, 1991 (Stanford); Mozart and Salieri (Mozart), 1992 (Stanford); The Prince and the Pauper (Lord Hertford), 1993 (Stanford); Guys and Dolls (Arvide), 1995 (Haste. St. Players, Berkeley); Merrily We Roll Along (Franklin Shepherd), 1996 (Haste St. Players, Berkeley); Porgy and Bess (Porgy), 1997 (Black Repertory Theatre, Berkeley); Threepenny Opera (Tiger Brown), 1997 (City College of San Francisco); The Magic Flute (Sarastro), 1998 (City College of San Francisco); Nymph Errant (Count Hohenadelborn-Mantalini), 1998 (42nd Street Moon); Call Me Madam (Senator Brockbank), 1998 (42nd Street Moon); Lady in the Dark (Charley Johnson), 1999 (City College of San Francisco).

Accompanist and Vocal Coach, Intermediate Singing Class, City College of San Francisco, spring 1998.

Composer and Lyricist, Haste Street Players, Berkeley, CA., spring 1994 -- The Princess Bride.

Assistant Musical Director, Theatreworks, Mountain View, CA., fall 1993 -- the musical review Sparks.

Vocal Director, Stanford University -- West Side Story, 1993.

Pianist, Into the Woods, 1991; Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1991; The Broadway Café: The Next Generation, 1992; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1992; Cabaret, 1992; The Nu Stu Revue, 1992; The Princess Bride, 1994.