John Rickford

John R. Rickford is a Guyanese American linguist born September 16, 1949, and the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. His research addresses language variation tied to ethnicity and social class, particularly African American Vernacular English and creole languages, and he argued that African American Vernacular English is systematic and rule governed like all natural speech, supporting the Oakland school board decision to recognize Ebonics in classroom instruction. With his son Russell Rickford he co-authored Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, which won the American Book Award in 2000, and he served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2015, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017, and became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.