John Baugh | |
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| Born | (1949-12-10)December 10, 1949 (age 76) |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Developing theory oflinguistic profiling |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Doctoral advisor | William Labov |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguistics |
| Sub-discipline | |
| Institutions | |
| Website | profiles |
John Gordon Baugh V (born December 10, 1949)[1] is an American academic andlinguist. His main areas of study aresociolinguistics,forensic linguistics, education, and African American language studies. He is currently the Barbara Jordan Distinguished Professor of Linguistics atRice University,[2] Professor Emeritus atWashington University in St. Louis, Professor Emeritus atStanford University,[3] and a former President of theLinguistic Society of America.[4] In 2020 Baugh was elected as a fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science in the section on Linguistics and Language Sciences,[5] and in 2021 he was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[6]
Baugh was previously a fellow of theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and of theRockefeller Foundation. He served as president of theAmerican Dialect Society from 1992 to 1994 and as the Edward Sapir Professor during the 2019 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute.
Baugh is best known for developing the theory oflinguistic profiling, which occurs when someone’s speech triggers discriminatory bias against them, such as when they are seeking employment or housing.[7] As a result of this work, Baugh has served as an expert witness and consultant in various legal cases, frequently working with theUnited States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and theUnited States Department of Justice, among other organizations.
Baugh is the author or co-editor of twelve books, includingBlack Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival;Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice;Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice; andLinguistics in Pursuit of Justice. He has advised and appeared in several linguistic documentaries such asDo You Speak American?[8] andTalking Black in America,[9] and he has been featured in publications includingBusiness Insider,[10]The Washington Post,[11][12]The Economist,[13] andThe Atlantic.[14]
Baugh began his undergraduate studies atTaft College before transferring toTemple University, where he completed hisB.A. in Speech, Rhetoric, and Communication. He then earned both anM.A. andPh.D. in Linguistics from theUniversity of Pennsylvania, under the doctoral supervision of sociologistWilliam Labov.[1] In addition to Labov, Baugh studied extensively under anthropological linguistDell Hymes and sociologistErving Goffman.
Baugh's first academic appointment was as lecturer in Black Studies and Linguistics atSwarthmore College in 1975. In 1978, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Black Studies, and Linguistics at Swarthmore. The following year, he began teaching at theUniversity of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Foreign Language Education. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1984.[1]
In 1990, Baugh became a Professor of Education and Linguistics atStanford University, where he remained until 2005. During this time, Baugh served as director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program. He became Professor Emeritus at Stanford upon his departure in 2005.[15]
Baugh joined the teaching faculty ofWashington University in St. Louis in 2005 as the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences. He served a term as director of African and African American Studies from 2005 to 2010, and held appointments in the departments of Anthropology, Education, English, Linguistics, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Urban Studies.[15]
In 2024, Baugh joined the faculty of Rice University as the Barbara Jordan Distinguished Professor of Linguistics.[16]
Baugh’s early research focused on the language and culture of African Americans, employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative sociolinguistic methods. Baugh conducted the first longitudinal linguistic study of African American adults, described in his first book,Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival.[17] Its title was chosen in consultation with those whom Baugh interviewed for the project; they often described their vernacular, or most informal manner of speech, as "street speech".
In 1999, while at Stanford University, Baugh wroteOut of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice.[18] The book contains a combination of linguistic and educational research, including specific ideas about ways to increase literacy among African Americans, who often fall victim to various forms of educational malpractice.
In response to an educational and legal controversy that resulted from a1996 resolution by theOakland Unified School District in California that declaredEbonics to be the indigenous language of its 27,000 African American students, Baugh wroteBeyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice.[19] Baugh debunked many of the misconceptions about the concept of Ebonics (aportmanteau of "ebony" and "phonics", for "black sounds", a term coined by social psychologistRobert Williams) as well as some of the educational policies that emerged in the wake of the controversy.
In 2022, Baugh was named to the advisory board of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English.[20][21]
Baugh andJoel Sherzer editedLanguage in Use: Readings in Sociolinguistics, a volume of sociolinguistic studies that includes a combination of qualitative and quantitative studies of language usage in diverse speech communities.[22]
His next editorial collaboration in sociolinguistics was afestschrift in honor of his mentorWilliam Labov that was produced under the editorial leadership ofGregory Guy ofNew York University. This work,Towards a Social Science of Language, was published in two volumes:Variation and Change in Language and Society andSocial Interaction and Discourse Structures.[23][24] The studies in both volumes pay tribute to Labov’s influence on the field of sociolinguistics.
Baugh's research on linguistic profiling began with his own experience seeking housing in theSan Francisco Bay Area as an African American.[25] Baugh noticed that landlords who had given him an appointment after he utilized Standard American English over the phone later denied him the opportunity to rent after meeting in person. Baugh conducted a series of experiments, initially described by Thomas Purnell, William Idsardi, and Baugh in the 1999 article "Perceptual and Phonetic Experiments on American English Dialect Identification", showing that discrimination can occur based on dialect and that listeners can identify ethnicity through short samples of speech alone.[26]
Baugh’s findings have been replicated by others,[27][28][29] affirming that people who speak with adialect oraccent that is devalued where they live may fall prey to linguistic profiling — having goods or services denied to them, typically sight unseen, during telephone calls after inquiring about those otherwise available goods or services. With long-standing support, primarily from theFord Foundation, Baugh has continued to study various forms of linguistic discrimination in housing, education, medicine, and the law. His work, initially concentrated in the United States, has expanded to other countries and regions, including Brazil, the Caribbean, France, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to legal contexts, especially those concerned with linguistic evidence and language use in the judicial process. The field can be traced to theCullen Davis murder trial, in whichRoger Shuy, a professor emeritus of linguistics atGeorgetown University, served as anexpert witness, usingdiscourse analysis methods to evaluate the speech of suspects and the defendant.[30][31] Since then, other linguists have engaged in forensic linguistic analyses. For instance, in theUnabomber case, Shuy and FBI AgentJames Fitzgerald used the language in Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto to discern his location and age.[32][33]
Baugh’s contributions to forensic linguistics have built upon his formulation of linguistic profiling, and his work has been used in legal cases involving hostile work environments,[34] unequal access to housing,[26][35] and murder.[36] Baugh has served as a consultant and as an expert witness in both civil and criminal trials.[15][37]
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