Abstract
Academic biographies seldom go into details about motivation, but in the case of Joshua Fishman, we have his statement that much of his career was directed by the question posed to him by his father, “What did you do for Yiddish today?” Answering this question did not just lead to his personal decision to speak Yiddish with his wife and children, but also to make sure that his grandchildren would be fluent speakers. But as he explains, his pioneering academic work in the sociology of language had a similar purpose: to explore the nature of language maintenance and shift and to build a scientific basis to support language activists who wished, like him, to fight what seems to be the inevitable evolutionary forces leading to the endangerment and loss of minority languages. His scholarly work included many pioneering contributions to the study of Yiddish sociolinguistics, but it expanded to include not just other threatened languages but also to build a solid academic basis for studying what happens when stronger languages meet weaker. Thus he was the creator of the field of the sociology of language and provided support for language minority activists, all the time making sure he was doing something for Yiddish.
References
Cobarrubias, Juan & Joshua A. Fishman (eds.). 1983. Progress in language planning: international perspectives, Vol. 31. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110820584Search in Google Scholar
Cooper, Robert L. & Bernard Spolsky (eds.). 1991. The influence of language on society and thought: Essays in honor of the 65th birthday of Joshua A. Fishman. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110859010Search in Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles A. 1998. Long-term commitments and lucky events. Amstedam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, Series 3. 39–58.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1965. Yiddish in America. International Journal of American Linguistics 31(2), Part 2.10.1075/z.49.11yidSearch in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1966. Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups. The Hague: Mouton.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1968. Readings in the sociology of language. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110805376Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1970a. The politics of bilingual education. In James E. Alatis (ed.), Report of the twenty-first annual Georgetown round table meeting of languages and linguistics, 47–58. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1970b. Sociolinguistics: A brief introduction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1972. The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1976. Bilingual education: An international sociological perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1978a. Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems. The Hague & Paris: Mouton.10.1515/9783110807097Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1978b. Advances in the Study of Societal Multilingualism. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783111684376Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1981a. Never say die! A thousand years of Yiddish in Jewish life and letters. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110820805Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1981b. The sociology of Jewish languages (IJSL 30). Berlin: Mouton.10.1515/ijsl.1981.30.5Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1985a. The sociology of Jewish languages from a general sociolinguistic point of view. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages, 3–21. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 1985b. Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1988. Reflections on the current state of language planning. In Lorne LaForge (ed.), Proceedings of the international conference on language planning, 406–428. Quebec: University of Laval Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1990. What is reversing language shift (RLS) and how can it succeed? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 11(1–2). 5–36.10.1080/01434632.1990.9994399Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1991a. My life through my work; my work through my life. In Ernst F. K. Koerner (ed.), First person singular II: Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences, Vol. 61, 105–124. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Reprinted in Hornberger and Pütz 2006).10.1075/sihols.61.07fisSearch in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1991b. Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1991c. Yiddish: Turning to life. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1997a. Uriel Weinreich (1926–1967): A sociolinguistic appreciation. In Christina B. Paulston & G. Richard Tucker (eds.), The early days of sociolinguistics: Memories and reflections, 307–313. Dallas, TX: The Summer Institute of Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1997b. In praise of the beloved language: A comparative view of positive ethnolinguistic consciousness. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110813241Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 2001. Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing language shift, revisited: A 21st century perspective. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853597060Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 2002a. The holiness of Yiddish: Who says Yiddish is holy and why? Language Policy 1(2). 123–141.10.1023/A:1016181810717Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 2002b. “Holy languages” in the context of societal bilingualism. In Li Wei, Jean-Marc Dewaele & Alex Housen (eds.), Opportunities and challenges of bilingualism, 15–24. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, David E. 2005. The rise of modern Yiddish culture. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.10.2307/j.ctt7zw828Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 2006. Do not leave your language alone: The hidden status agendas within corpus planning in language policy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.10.4324/9780203825808Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 2008. Rethinking the ausbau-abstand dichotomy into a continuous and multivariate system. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191. 17–26.10.1515/IJSL.2008.022Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A., Robert L. Cooper & Roxana Ma. 1971. Bilingualism in the barrio. Bloomington, IN: Research Center for the Language Sciences, Indiana University.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A., Charles A. Ferguson & Jyotirindra Das Gupta. 1968. Language problems of developing nations. New York: Wiley.Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. & David E. Fishman. 1978. Yiddish in Israel: A case study of efforts to revise a monocentric language policy. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Advances in the study of societal monolingualism, 185–262. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783111684376.185Search in Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A., Michael. H. Gertner, Esther G. Lowy & William G. Milán. 1985. The rise and fall of the ethnic revival: Perspectives on language and ethnicity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110863888Search in Google Scholar
García, Ofelia, & Joshua A. Fishman (eds.). 2002. The multilingual apple: Languages in New York, 2nd edn. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110885811Search in Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1972. The ecology of language: Essays by Einar Haugen. Anwar S. Dil (ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Holm, Wayne. 2015. Reports from the field: In tribute: Joshua A. Fishman’s contributions to Native American language education. Journal of American Indian Education 54(3). 113–124.Search in Google Scholar
Hutton, Christopher M. 1999. Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue fascism, race and the science of language. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Katz, Dovid. 2004. Words on fire: The unfinished story of Yiddish. New York, NY: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
McCarty, Teresa L. 2015. Questions for Bernard Spolsky. Language Policy 2015. 1–9.10.1007/s10993-015-9381-zSearch in Google Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard. 2011. Ferguson and Fishman: Sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. In Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone & Paul E. Kerswill (eds.), The Sage handbook of sociolinguistics, 11–23. London: Sage Publications.10.4135/9781446200957.n2Search in Google Scholar
Weinreich, Max. 1980. History of the Yiddish language (J. A. Fishman & S. Noble, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton
