John H. McWhorter





John H. McWhorter

Author profile


born
January 01, 1965

gender
male


About this author

Dr. John McWhorter is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He earned his B.A. from Rutgers University, his M.A. from New York University, and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University. Before taking his position at the Manhattan Institute, he held teaching positions at Cornell University, where he held the position of Assistant Professor, and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the position of Associate Professor.

Professor McWhorter specializes in language change and language contact. He is the author of The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language; The Word on the Street, a book on dialects and Black English; and Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music in America and Why We Should...more


Average rating: 3.81 · 3,120 ratings · 516 reviews · 19 distinct works · Similar authors
Our Magnificent Bastard Ton...
3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 1,346 ratings — published 2008 — 8 editions
The Power of Babel: A Natur...
3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 819 ratings — published 2001
Losing the Race: Self-Sabot...
3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 avg rating — 218 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions
What Language Is: And What ...
3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 avg rating — 210 ratings — published 2011
Doing Our Own Thing: The De...
3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 avg rating — 148 ratings — published 2003 — 4 editions
Word On The Street: Debunki...
3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 avg rating — 91 ratings — published 1998 — 3 editions
The Story of Human Language
4.45 of 5 stars 4.45 avg rating — 67 ratings — published 2004 — 4 editions
Authentically Black
3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 68 ratings — published 2003 — 5 editions
Winning the Race: Beyond th...
3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 62 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions
All about the Beat: Why Hip...
3.19 of 5 stars 3.19 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions
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“A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.”
John H. McWhorter

“Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.”
John H. McWhorter, Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English

“English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welsh on lonely nights.”
John H. McWhorter

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