![]() In The Language Hoax, he outlines how, despite the fact language influences thought in an "infinitesimal way", and culture is expressed through language, language itself does not create different ways of thinking or determine world views. McWhorter is a vocal critic of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Some other linguists 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. 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. As examples, he cites English, Mandarin Chinese, Persian, the modern colloquial varieties of Arabic, Swahili, and Indonesian. He argues 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. His work has expanded to a general investigation of the effect of second-language acquisition on a language. Much of McWhorter's academic work is concerned with creole languages and their relationship to other languages, often focusing on the Surinam creole language Saramaccan. 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. He was contributing editor at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014. He hosts the Lexicon Valley podcast - for Slate from 2016 to 2021, and currently for Booksmart Studios. ![]() He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and, after writing op-eds for The New York Times for several years, became an Opinion columnist there in 2021. McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New York Sun, The New Yorker, The Root, The Daily Beast, and CNN. McWhorter is the author of the courses "The Story of Human Language" "Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language" "Myths, Lies and Half-Truths About English Usage" "Language Families of the World" and "Language From A to Z" in the series The Great Courses, produced by the Teaching Company. The Program of Linguistics (including a revived undergraduate major as of 2021) is currently housed in the Department of Slavic Languages. As Columbia's Department of Linguistics had been dissolved in 1989, McWhorter was initially assigned to the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Since 2008, he has taught linguistics, American studies, and classes in the core curriculum program at Columbia University. He left that position to become a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. McWhorter was an associate professor of linguistics at Cornell University from 1993 to 1995, then an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1995 until 2003. He obtained an MA degree in American Studies from New York University and a PhD degree in Linguistics in 1993 from Stanford University. Later, he attended Rutgers University and received a BA degree in French in 1985. ![]() He attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia and after tenth grade was accepted to Simon's Rock College where he earned an AA degree. His father, John Hamilton McWhorter IV (1927–1996), was a college administrator, and his mother, Schelysture Gordon McWhorter (1937–2011), taught social work at Temple University. McWhorter was born and raised in Philadelphia. ![]()
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