Language Spread

Salikoko S Mufwene is the Frank J McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. from the same school in 1979 and has taught there since January 1992. During the 2001–2002 academic year, he served as a visiting professor at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, at the National University of Singapore, and at Harvard University. He was a ‘professeur invité’ at the Collège de France in Paris in autumn 2003. His current research is on language evolution, which he approaches from the perspectives of population genetics and macroecology. His book The ecology of language evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) draws heavily from creoles, indigenized Englishes, and African languages. He has edited or coedited Topics in African linguistics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993), Africanisms in Afro-American language varieties (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), and African-American English (London: Routledge, 1998). He has also cotranslated and helped revise Robert Chaudenson's Creolization of language and culture (London: Routledge 2001). He is the series editor of Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact. He has authored over 150 essays on creoles and African languages.