Charles Carpenter Fries (November 29, 1887 – December 8, 1967) was an American
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
and
language teacher. Fries is considered the creator of the Aural-Oral method (also erroneously called the Audio-Lingual method). He believed, along with
Robert Lado, that language teaching and learning should be approached in a scientific way.
Fries graduated from
Bucknell University
Bucknell University is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal-arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts a ...
in 1909 where he also taught from 1911 to 1920, becoming a professor in 1917. Most of his career was spent lecturing at the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
(1920 and 1958). Fries was president of the
National Council of Teachers of English in 1927 and 1928, president of the
Linguistic Society of America in 1939, and director of the Linguistic Institute from 1936 to 1940 and from 1945 to 1947. He founded the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan and served as its director from 1941 to 1956.
Fries's chief works dealt with
structural linguistics
Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within th ...
. He conducted diachronic and synchronic studies of the English language, prepared a series of English-language textbooks for foreigners, and developed, what he called 'scientific principles for the study of foreign languages'. Fries was the editor of the journal Language Learning in 1948. Between 1928 and 1958 he was editor in chief of the Early Modern English Dictionary.
Fries wrote extensively on language teaching including early work on
Corpus linguistics
Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...
,
education and linguistics.
References
Relevant literature
Fries, Peter Howard, and Nancy M. Fries, eds. ''Toward an understanding of language: Charles Carpenter Fries in perspective''. Vol. 40. John Benjamins Publishing, 1985.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fries, Charles Carpenter
1887 births
1967 deaths
University of Michigan faculty
Linguistic Society of America presidents