ABSTRACT
John Russell Rickford is one of the most influential linguists in the field of language and society. During his four-decades-long career, his work has shaped and continues to influence research in areas as diverse as Creole studies, sociolinguistics, stylistics, education, and language and politics, to name a few. He is a Black scholar of Caribbean descent who has mentored and nourished many scholars, critically including Black and Brown scholars, many of whom have gone on to greatly impact their fields. The pervasive threads that run through Rickford’s body of work are the emphasis on combining solid linguistic analysis with rigorous methodological acumen, the importance of analyzing language with a clear social consciousness, and the awareness of the sociopolitical ramifications of the work linguists do. Throughout his academic trajectory, Rickford has maintained intense working relationships with a host of researchers, including contemporaries and former students, many of whom have become key players in their respective fields of scientific inquiry.
