William Labov

American linguist; father of sociolinguistics (1927–2024)

William David Labov ( lə-BOHV; December 4, 1927 – December 17, 2024) was an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics, and "one of the most influential linguists of the 20th and 21st centuries". Labov was a professor in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and pursued research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology.

From Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA. More on occurri.