Background

John Hamilton McWhorter V was born on October 6, 1965, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, to John Hamilton McWhorter IV, a college administrator, and Schelysture Gordon McWhorter, a teacher.

Education

John McWhorter received an Associate degree from Simon’s Rock College of Bard (now Bard College at Simon's Rock). He received a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University in 1985, a Master of Arts from New York University in 1987, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1993.

Career

After graduation, McWhorter was an associate professor of linguistics at Cornell University from 1993 to 1995 before taking up a position as associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1995 until 2003, but left that position to become a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. He also was a contributing editor at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014 and a columnist for the New York Sun from 2006 to 2008. He has written columns regularly for The Root, The New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, CNN and Time Ideas.

Professor McWhorter has taught the American Studies seminar "Language in America," a study of American linguistic history that considered Native American languages, immigrant languages, creole languages, and Black English - their development, interactions, and preservation. He has also taught the seminar "Language Contact," which focused specifically on the mixture of language in North America and studied the development of creoles, pidgins, koines, "vehicular" languages, and nonstandard dialects. The seminar considered the perceived legitimacy of languages, and the standing of language mixtures in media and education.

Currently, John H. McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

Achievements

• John McWhorter is known as the author of many books on language, race relations and cultural issues. McWhorter's work has appeared in leading publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The National Review, City Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. McWhorter also does regular commentaries for All Things Considered.
  
  McWhorter was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Non-Fiction and has appeared numerous national TV and radio shows, such as Meet the Press, John McLaughlin's One on One, the O'Reilly Factor and NPR's Fresh Air. McWhorter is also a well-known and widely published linguistics scholar.
  
  

Works

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  • The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language

    (In this work, the author shares his expertise as a lingui...)

    2001
  • Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America

    (In his first major book on the state of black America sin...)

    2005
  • Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage

    (Conventional wisdom suggests English is going to the dogs...)

    2013
  • All about the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America

    (The bestselling commentator, hailed for his frank and fea...)

    2008
  • Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis

    (Creolists have established that many processes determine ...)

    1997
  • Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America's Lingua Franca

    (Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tou...)

    2016
  • Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America

    (The idea that there is one "best" English is so intuitive...)

    2000
  • Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still

    (A bestselling linguist takes us on a lively tour of how t...)

    2016
  • Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English

    (Though there is a contingent of linguists who fight the f...)

    2009
  • Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

    (A professor of linguistics paints a controversial portrai...)

    2000
  • The Language Hoax

    (This short, opinionated book addresses the Sapir-Whorf hy...)

    2014
  • What Language Is

    (New York Times bestselling author and renowned linguist, ...)

    2011
  • The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact

    (John McWhorter challenges an enduring paradigm among ling...)

    2000
  • The Story of Human Language

    (Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and...)

    2013
  • The Story of Human Language

    (Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and...)

    2004
  • Defining Creole

    (This volume gathers the last ten years worth of published...)

    2005
  • Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

    (A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English lang...)

    2008
  • Authentically Black

    (The critically acclaimed book from the bestselling author...)

    2003
  • The Word On The Street

    (McWhorter describes common American English for lay reade...)

    1998
  • Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care 2003

Religion

McWhorter is an atheist.

Politics

McWhorter has criticized left-wing and activist educators in particular, such as Paulo Freire and Jonathan Kozol. He believes that affirmative action should be based on class rather than race.

Interests

• Foreign languages, prehistoric life, evolution, collecting musical theatre recordings, vintage American film, theatre, television, radio, animated cartoons, playing the piano, composing music and lyrics, and songs

Connections

Father:

John Hamilton McWhorter IV

Mother:

Schelysture Gordon McWhorter

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields, Vol. 193 In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2011