John Russell Rickford

JOHN RUSSELL RICKFORD is the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities (emeritus) at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. His books include African American English, Dimensions of a Creole Continuum, and Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, co-authored with his son Russell J. Rickford.

Rickford was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. He served as President of the Linguistic Society of America in 2015, and Spoken Soul won the American Book Award in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

John was born in Georgetown, Guyana.

John Russell Rickford’s books are published by Trade Paper Press, an imprint of Turner Publishing.

Browse more: New Releases · Award-Winning Books