 guyanese professor john r rickford awarded highest academic honor in the usa guyanese professor john r rickford awarded highest academic honor in the usa guyanese professor john r rickford awarded highest academic honor in the usa webmaster fri 5192017 1340 guyaneseamerican  professor john r rickford of stanford university  was recently notified that he had been awarded one of the highest academic honors in the united states  election to the american academy of arts and sciences founded in 1780 the american academy of arts and sciences is one of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies and independent policy research centers in the us convening leaders from the academic business and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing and opportunities available to the nation and the world the academy s work is advanced by its elected members who are leaders in the academic disciplines the arts business and public affairs from around the world    current and former members of the academy include benjamin franklin george washington ralph waldo emerson margaret mead martin luther king jr john f kennedy georgia o keefe john hope franklin john updike charles darwin albert einstein winston churchill laurence olivier nelson mandela and more than 250 nobel and pulitzer prize winners   academy research currently focuses on education the humanities and the arts science engineering and technology policy global security and international affairs and american institutions and the public good john r rickford is the je wallace sterling professor of linguistics and the humanities at stanford university he is also professor by courtesy in education and bass university fellow in undergraduate education he has been at stanford since 1980 after teaching linguistics at the university of guyana from 1974 to 1984 and serving as vice dean of the faculty of arts there prior to leaving guyana for his university education on a us scholarship in 1968 he attended sacred heart rc elementary school and queen s college where he also taught english for a year after completing his gce a levels professor rickford received his ba with highest honors in sociolinguistics from the university of california santa cruz in 1971 and his phd in linguistics from the university of pennsylvania in 1979 he won a dean s award for distinguished teaching in 1984 and a bing fellowship for excellence in teaching in 1992 he also served as president of the linguistic society of america in 2015 and in 2016 won the award for the best paper in the journal  language  one of the leading journals in his field for a paper he authored with a graduate student on the systematic vernacular of rachel   jeantel a close friend of trayvon martin and the reasons why her testimony was misunderstood and disregarded in the 2013 trial of george zimmerman for trayvon s murder the primary focus of john s research and teaching is sociolinguistics the relation between linguistic variation and change and social structure he is especially interested in the relation between language and ethnicity social class and style language variation and change pidgin and creole languages african american vernacular english and the applications of linguistics to educational and legal issues professor rickford is the author of numerous scholarly articles and author or editor of several books including  a festival of guyanese words  ed 1978  dimensions of a creole continuum  1987  analyzing variation in language  coed 1987  sociolinguistics and pidgin creole studies  ed 1988  african american english structure history and use  co ed 1998  african american vernacular english features evolution educational implications  1999  creole genesis attitudes and discourse  coed 2000  spoken soul the story of black english  coauthored 2000 winner of an american book award  style and sociolinguistic variation  coed 2001  language in the usa themes for the twentyfirst century  coed 2004  language culture and caribbean identity  coed 2012  african american creole and other vernacular englishes a bibliographic resource  coauthored 2012 and  raciolinguistics how language shapes our ideas about race  coedited 2015 a collection of his papers is scheduled for publication in 2018 by cambridge university press in a book entitled  variation and change in sociolinguistics and creole studies theory and analysis  professor rickford stated that he was both exhilarated and humbled that the academy had bestowed this signature honor on him election to the american academy of arts and sciences is the pinnacle of his long    distinguished career he will spend part of this summer at the rockefeller foundation s research center in bellagio italy working to develop new ways to expand linguistic versatility among vernacular speakers while reducing dialect prejudice and discrimination against them in schools courtrooms workplaces and other gatekeeping institutions john is married to angela rickford nee marshall who attended bishops    high school guyana and is now professor of education at san jose state university they have four children shiyama russell anakela and luke guyanese professor john r rickford american academy of arts and sciences 