Walt Wolfram (; born February 15, 1941) is an American

sociolinguist Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...

specializing in social and ethnic

dialects The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

. He was one of the early pioneers in the study of urban

African American English African-American English (or AAE; also known as Black American English, or Black English in American linguistics) is the set of English sociolects spoken by most Black people in the United States and many in Canada; most commonly, it refers t ...

through his work in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

in 1969. He is the

William C. Friday William Clyde Friday (July 13, 1920 – October 12, 2012) was an American educator who served as the head of the University of North Carolina system from 1956 to 1986. He was born in Raphine, Virginia and raised in Dallas, North Carolina. Friday ...

Distinguished University Professor Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" informally refers collectively to the academic ranks of assistant professor, asso ...

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The univers ...

. Since the 1960s, Wolfram has authored or co-authored more than 20 books and more than 300 articles on variation in

. He was an active participant in the 1996 debate surrounding the Oakland Ebonics controversy, supporting the legitimacy of

as a systematic language system. In addition to African American English, Wolfram has written extensively about

Appalachian English Appalachian English is American English native to the Appalachian mountain region of the Eastern United States. Historically, the term "Appalachian dialect" refers to a local English variety of southern Appalachia, also known as Smoky Mount ...

Puerto Rican English While Spanish is the first official language of Puerto Rico, English is the second official language. Spanish has been an official language in Puerto Rico since it was first colonized by Spain in the 15th century. English was first introduced on ...

Lumbee English The Lumbee are a Native American people primarily centered in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland and Scotland counties in North Carolina. They also live in surrounding states and Baltimore, Maryland. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is a state-recog ...

, and many other dialects of

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

, particularly those of rural, isolated communities such as

Ocracoke Island Ocracoke
, from the North Carolina Collection website at the

Biography

Wolfram was born

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

, Pennsylvania in 1941. His parents were German immigrants. He attended and graduated from Olney High School, where he played baseball, basketball, and football. He received his B.A. in anthropology (Greek) in 1963 from

Wheaton College Wheaton College may refer to: * Wheaton College (Illinois), a private Christian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois * Wheaton College (Massachusetts) Wheaton College is a private liberal arts college in Norton, Massachus ...

, where he played football and basketball. He received his M.A. in linguistics from Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1966, and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1969, studying under

Roger Shuy Roger Wellington Shuy (born January 5, 1931 in Akron, Ohio) is an American linguist best known for his work in sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics. He received his BA from Wheaton College in 1952, his MA from Kent State University in 1954, ...

. He has been on the faculty at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

and the University of the District of Columbia, was the Director of Research at the

Center for Applied Linguistics The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1959 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to promote language learning and cultural understanding. Its president and chief executive officer ...

from 1980 to 1992, and in 1992 he was named the first William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University. Wolfram is a former president of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: '' Language'' ...

as well as of the

American Dialect Society The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society p ...

Linguistics and the public

Linguistic gratuity

In 1993, Wolfram formulated the principle of linguistic gratuity, which states that "investigators who have obtained linguistic data from members of a speech community should actively pursue ways in which they can return linguistic favors to the community". In 2008, he and co-authors outlined venues for engaging in linguistic gratuity, including "video documentaries, oral history CDs, museum exhibits, formal curricular programs, and popular trade books on language differences," venues through which Wolfram himself has engaged in collaborative engagement via the Language and Life Project .

Language and Life Project

Wolfram directs th
Language and Life Project
a nonprofit at North Carolina State University dedicated to documenting and celebrating language diversity through public means. He established the Language and Life Project in 1993. Through the Language and Life Project, Wolfram has been involved in the production of television and film documentaries about dialect diversity (often in collaboration with Neal Hutcheson), as well as the construction of museum exhibits, the publication of popular books, and the development of dialect awareness curricula for schools and the general public.

Documentaries

Wolfram was executive producer for the Language and Life Project documentary film
First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee
' (2014), produced and directed by Danica Cullinan and Neal Hutcheson. The documentary chronicles the history of the

Cherokee language 200px, Number of speakers Cherokee or Tsalagi ( chr, ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, ) is an endangered-to- moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. ''Ethnologue'' states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speak ...

in North Carolina and the efforts of the

Eastern Band of Cherokee The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ, ''Tsalagiyi Detsadanilvgi'') is a federally recognized Indian Tribe based in Western North Carolina in the United States. They are descended from the sma ...

to save and preserve their

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead lang ...

. The film was awarded Best Public Service Film at the 2014

American Indian Film Festival The American Indian Film Festival is an annual non-profit film festival in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the world's oldest venue dedicated solely to Native American/First Nations films and prepared the way for the 1979 forma ...

. In 2015, PBS selected the documentary for national distribution, making it available for broadcast at member stations in 2016. In 2016, film won a regional Emmy in the documentary/cultural category at the 30th Midsouth Emmy Awards. Also in conjunction with the Language and Life Project, Wolfram was executive producer for the documentary films
Talking Black in America: The Story of African American Language
' (2019) an
''Signing Black in America: The Story of Black ASL''
(2020), both produced and directed by Danica Cullinan and Neal Hutcheson; as well as th
Talking Black in American Project
a five-part documentary television series. ''Talking Black in America'' (2019) chronicles the history and impact of

. In 2020, the film won a Midsouth Regional

Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

award in the documentary/cultural category. ''Signing Black in America'' (2020) is the first documentary about

Black ASL Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation ...

Popular books

Wolfram has co-authored and co-edited multiple books written for the general public, including: ''Hoi Toide on the Sound Soide: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue'' (1997 UNC Press), co-authored with

Natalie Schilling Natalie A. Schilling is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Schilling received her PhD and BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MA from North Carolina State University. She is an expert ...

; ''American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast'' ( Wiley 2005), co-edited with Ben Ward; ''Talkin' Tar Heel: How our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina'' (2014 UNC Press), co-authored with Jeffrey Reaser; and ''The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages, 3rd Edition'' (

Equinox A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and se ...

2019). ''Talkin' Tar Heel'' explores regional, social, and ethnic dialects of North Carolina, drawing upon decades of research and thousands of recorded interviews with North Carolinians. The book was written for the general audience, with the goal of "shar ngknowledge and respect for the languages and dialects in North Carolina in a readable, audible, and visual format accessible to the public." It is first popular linguistics book to embed more than 100 video and audio clips through the use of

QR code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about t ...

s. The book was awarded the 2014 North Caroliniana Book Award by the North Caroliniana Society.

Awards and honors

In 2008, Wolfram was honored with the prestigious John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit affiliate of the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. In 2010, he was awarded the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Award by the

. In 2013, he was awarded the North Carolina Award, the highest award given to a North Carolina citizen. In 2018, he was awarded the Governor James E. Holshouser, Jr. Award for Excellence in Public Service by the

UNC System The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sys ...

. In 2019, he was inducted into the prestigious

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

References

Wolfram, Walt and Jeffrey Reaser. 2014. Talkin' Tar Heel: How our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina. Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press.

External links

Walt Wolfram's homepage at NCSU

Walt Wolfram's "How They Became Linguists" on LinguistList

WUNC interview with Wolfram about ''Talkin' Tar Heel''

Indy Weekly interview with Wolfram on his educational documentary films

NCSU Libraries Guide to the Walt Wolfram Papers 1971-1998

Wolfram named recipient of the 2008 Caldwell Award for the Humanities from the North Carolina Humanities Council
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfram, Walt Sociolinguists Linguists from the United States 1941 births Living people Wheaton College (Illinois) alumni Georgetown University faculty Hartford Seminary alumni North Carolina State University faculty University of the District of Columbia faculty Linguistic Society of America presidents Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists