Abstract

This short volume provides a comprehensive and synoptic view of Joshua A. Fishman's contributions to international sociolinguistics from 1949 to the present. Readers will find in this volume the essential understandings of Fishmanian sociolinguistics in two short essays that integrate his life's work. The first essay by García and Schiffman identifies the major theoretical contributions and the development of Fishmanian sociolinguistics, often echoing Fishman's own words. The essay by Peltz then analyzes Fishman´s contributions to Yiddish scholarship, as well as the role of that scholarship in his general work. These essential understandings are then extended through Fishman's own concluding sentiments, as well as by the comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of over 1,000 titles of Joshua A. Fishman's work, compiled by his wife, Gella Schweid Fishman. Together, the contributions in this volume pay tribute to the life work of one of the world's most prolific and original scholars in the field of sociolinguistics -- the founder of what we refer to in this volume as Fishmanian sociolinguistics.

Ofelia García is professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is presently coordinator of the Bilingual Education program and co-director of the Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies. García research interests are in the areas of sociology of language, language education policy, multilingualism and multilingual education, immigrant education, and teacher education for urban schools. She was a student of Joshua A. Fishman and has been his co-author and co-editor, most recently in The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City (Mouton).

Rakhmiel Peltz is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Director of Judaic Studies at Drexel University. His specialization is the social history of Yiddish language and culture. He holds two doctorates, one in Biological Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania and the second in Yiddish Studies and Linguistics from Columbia University, and has published extensively in both fields. His book, From Immigrant to Ethic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia (Stanford University Press, 1998), is the first book on spoken Yiddish in America and provides a fresh look at ethnic culture in the contemporary USA. He is now studying the private culture of the pre-World War II Jewish family in Eastern Europe.

Harold Schiffman's research interests focus on the linguistics of the Dravidian languages,especially Tamil, and to a lesser extent, Kannada, and in the area of language policy. He has published in these two areas where overlapping interests in sociolinguistics (diglossia, language standardization, multilingualism) intersect with language policy and the politics of language. He is also director of the Consortium for Language Policy and Planning, and Pedagogical Materials Director of the newly constituted National South Asia Language Resource Center. Recent publications include Linguistic Culture and Language Policy (Routledge 1996) and A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil (Cambridge University Press, 1999).