Abstract
This essay is based on a June 2014 interview with Bernard Spolsky, in which he discussed his life with educational linguistics. A self-described “accidental professor,” Spolsky directed the first study of Navajo sociolinguistics, established educational linguistics as a field of study and practice, co-created a national language policy for Israel, conducted seminal language surveys of Māori and Samoan in support of Indigenous language revitalization efforts, and founded this journal. In the context of this work he has published 240 scholarly articles and book chapters and 35 books, including 66 “Recent Publications” written post-retirement. His recent work returns to his original interest in Jewish sociolinguistics. This article considers Spolsky’s remarkable legacy and his continuing contributions to the field of language planning and policy.
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Notes
Navajo Community College has been renamed Diné College.
Joel is now CEO of a major start-up Q & A company in New York; Ruth, with five children, is vice president for production of an Israeli start-up.
Language Policy has since been taken over by Springer Science.
Among the 36 doctoral students Bernard has directed, four are now professors emeritus or emerita, three others became full professors, and three are associate professors; a number of others teach English as a foreign language. One became an assistant secretary of education under President Nixon; another, after an academic career in a German university, became the authority on Black Forest horology in the U.S. Bernard’s former master’s students are widely scattered: Two are now professors emeriti in South Korea, and Bernard has edited two books with the daughter of one of them.
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McCarty, T.L. Questions for Bernard Spolsky. Lang Policy 15, 475–483 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-015-9381-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-015-9381-z