McWhorter was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father, John Hamilton McWhorter IV (1927–1996),[6] was a college administrator, and his mother, Schelysture Gordon McWhorter (1937–2011), taught social work at Temple University.[7][8] He attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia and, after tenth grade, was accepted to Simon's Rock College, where he earned an AA degree. McWhorter, born to a bureaucrat and a professor, has described his upbringing as part of the Black middle class. He has also attributed some of his views to the Quaker school he attended as a child.[9]
Since 2008, he has taught linguistics, American studies, and classes in the core curriculum program at Columbia University. As Columbia's Department of Linguistics had been dissolved in 1989, McWhorter was initially assigned to the Department of English and Comparative Literature. The Program of Linguistics (including a revived undergraduate major as of 2021) is currently housed in the Department of Slavic Languages.[citation needed]
Other teaching
McWhorter is the professor of the courses "The Story of Human Language";[13] "Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language";[14] "Myths, Lies and Half-Truths About English Usage";[15] "Language Families of the World";[16] and "Language From A to Z"[17] in the series The Great Courses, produced by the Teaching Company.
He hosts the Lexicon Valley[18] podcast for Slate from 2016 to 2021, and currently for Booksmart Studios.[19]
Books
McWhorter has published a number of books on linguistics and on race relations, including Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why You Should, Like, Care, and Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.[20]
Linguistics
Much of McWhorter's academic work is concerned with creole languages and their relationship to other languages, often focusing on the Suriname creole language Saramaccan. His work has expanded to a general investigation of the effect of second-language acquisition on a language.
McWhorter has argued that languages naturally tend toward complexity and irregularity, a tendency that is reversed only by adults acquiring the language, and creole formation is simply an extreme example of the latter.[23] As examples, he cites English, Mandarin Chinese, Persian, the modern colloquial varieties of Arabic, Swahili, and Indonesian. He has outlined his ideas in academic format in Language Interrupted and Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity and, for the general public, in What Language Is and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.
Specific application
McWhorter has been a proponent of a theory which postulates that various languages on the island of Flores underwent transformation because of aggressive migrations from the nearby island of Sulawesi. He has further contended that English was influenced by the Celtic languages spoken by the indigenous population and which were then encountered by the Germanic invaders of Britain.[24] He has also written various articles that argue that colloquial constructions, such as the modern uses of "like" and "totally", and other non-standard speech should be considered alternative renditions of English rather than degraded ones.[25]
The Language Hoax
McWhorter is a vocal critic of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. In his 2014 book The Language Hoax, he argues that, although language influences thought in an "infinitesimal way" and culture is expressed through language, he believes that language itself does not create different ways of thinking or determine world views.[26]
Language proficiency
McWhorter is proficient in English, French and Spanish, and has some competence in Russian and several other languages.[27][28][29]
Criticism of theories
Some of McWhorter's fellow linguists, such as Mauro Giuffré of the University of Palermo, suggest that his notions of simplicity and complexity are impressionistic and grounded on comparisons with European languages, and they point to exceptions to his proposed correlations.[30][31]
Political views
McWhorter has characterized himself as "a cranky liberalDemocrat". In support of this description, he states that while he "disagree[s] sustainedly with many of the tenets of the Civil Rights orthodoxy", he also "supports Barack Obama, reviles the War on Drugs, supports gay marriage, never voted for George W. Bush and writes of Black English as coherent speech".
McWhorter has stated that the conservativeManhattan Institute, for which he worked, "has always been hospitable to Democrats". McWhorter is biweekly guest on The Glenn Show, a commentary podcast hosted by Glenn Loury, a member of the Manhattan Institute and professor of economics at Brown University.[32]
In a 2001 article, McWhorter's discourse was that the attitudes and general behavior of black people, rather than white racism, were what held African Americans back in the United States. According to McWhorter, "victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism underlie the general black community's response to all race-related issues", and "it's time for well-intentioned whites to stop pardoning as 'understandable' the worst of human nature whenever black people exhibit it".[34]
Racism and language
In April 2015, McWhorter appeared on NPR and said that the use of the word "thug" was becoming code for "the N-word" or "black people ruining things" when used by whites in reference to criminal activity.[35][36] He added that use by President Barack Obama and former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (for which she later apologized) could not be interpreted in the same way, given that among blacks the use of "thug" often connotes admiration for black self-direction and survival. McWhorter clarified his views in an article in The Washington Post.[36]
Racism and technology
McWhorter has argued that software algorithms by themselves cannot be racist since, unlike humans, they lack intention. Rather, unless the human engineers behind a technological product intend for it to discriminate against people of a particular ethnicity, any unintentional bias should be seen as a software bug that needs to be fixed ("an obstacle to achievement") rather than an issue of racism.[37]
McWhorter has criticized both fearmongering and dismissal of concerns over the usage of critical race theory in education. McWhorter argued in a New York Times op-ed that "if critical race theory isn’t being taught to children—and in a technical sense, it isn’t—then it’s hardly illogical to suppose that some other concern may be afoot." McWhorter argues instead for continued concern over critical race influenced teaching, which McWhorter worries would be simplistic if taught to children and ineffective to produce nuanced discussion.[39]
McWhorter has posited that anti-racism has become as harmful in the United States as racism itself.[43][44] McWhorter has criticized the term "microaggression",[45] as well as what he regards as the overly casual conflation of racial bias with white supremacy.[46] As early as December 2018, McWhorter described anti-racism as a "religious movement".[47]
McWhorter criticized Robin DiAngelo's 2018 book White Fragility following its resurgence in sales during the George Floyd protests beginning in May 2020, arguing that it "openly infantilized Black people" and "simply dehumanized us", and "does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching [for residual racism by white people] is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good."[48]
In his 2021 book Woke Racism, McWhorter expands upon these views and argues that "third wave anti-racism" is a religion he terms "Electism" with white privilege as original sin. McWhorter likens the books White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist and Between the World and Me to sacred religious texts. He argues that this hypothesized status as a religion explains the behavior of its adherents, whom he calls "the Elect". He advises that since the faith (like all faith) is not open to discussion, arguments with its adherents should be avoided in favor of pragmatic action against racism. McWhorter advocates three programs: ending the war on drugs, teaching reading by phonics to children lacking books at home, and free vocational education, promoting the idea that not everyone needs a four-year college education to succeed.[49] McWhorter has expressed qualified support for reparations for African Americans, particularly those descended from victims of redlining.[50]
Personal life
McWhorter separated from his wife in 2019. He has two daughters.[51] He plays the piano and has appeared in musical theater productions.[52]
2021: Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and ForeverISBN978-0-593-18879-8
2021: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black AmericaISBN978-0-593-42306-6
References
^McWhorter, John H. "Lexicon Valley". Slate. The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. (Listen to McWhorter's pronunciation of his own name at the beginning of each podcast.)
^"John H McWhorter". Columbia University Department of Slavic Languages. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
^McWhorter, John (2007). Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 5–18. ISBN978-0-198-04231-0.
^McWhorter, John (February 3, 2014). "Let's Stop Pretending That French Is an Important Language". The New Republic. When I was a teenaged language nerd in the seventies and eighties, it was the tail end of a time when kids of my bent knew French first and foremost, and then likely dabbled in other Romance languages, plus some German and maybe a dash of Russian.
^Khodorkovsky, Maria (October 9, 2015). "7 Questions To A Linguist: John McWhorter Scales The "Mt. Everest" Of Russian". ALTA Language Services. these days I am trying to teach myself Mandarin, and I am just wallowing in finally getting a feel of the inner workings of a language that isn't all about prefixes and suffixes and isn't related at all to European languages... One language that I failed to ever really crack was Japanese, simply because it seemed that mastering the writing system would be so difficult that it wasn't worth trying if I wasn't doing it for any real reason. But these days I am climbing that mountain again with Mandarin and finding that with some quiet, semi-obsessive dedication, learning to read on the level of a child isn't impossible.
^John McWhorter (November 30, 2021). "Stephen Sondheim wrote my Life's Soundtrack". The New York Times. Retrieved February 21, 2022. Way back, I... played the lead in a small production of 'Merrily We Roll Along,' and I have played piano for productions of 'Funny Thing' and 'Into The Woods.'
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