[Edling] Bernard Spolsky

[Francis M. Hult via Edling]

Shared on behalf of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas.  Apologies for cross-posting.  FMH


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas <skutnabbkangas at gmail.com>

“A cedar of Lebanon has fallen, a Ponderosa redwood of sociolinguistics”,
Joshua Fishman wrote in an obituary about Einar Haugen in 1995 (
https://www.jstor.org/stable/416220). With Bernard Spolsky, the third
“cedar of Lebanon”, is no more, except in memories. I have been fortunate
to work with all three of them (I am 82, only 7 years younger than
Bernard).



I worked at Harvard University as Einar’s research assistant in 1967-68,
and was ignorant about absolutely everything; Einar was my first real
teacher. He was very proud when he had read my first “real” book,
*Tvåspråkighet*, in 1981 (in English in 1984). We made a deal very late one
evening, eating dinner in his home (my flight to Boston was 7 hours late
but Einar waited at the airport while Eva was cooking…). Einar wanted to
write a review of my book, but I persuaded him to start cooking one meal
per week so that his wife Eva could write HER book. Einar did not write the
review but neither did he start cooking… My last picture of Einar is from
our farm where Einar is holding one of our newborn lambs.



Joshua and Gella were very close friends too. My husband Robert and I had
one memorable meal in their Californian home on a Sabbath evening, and
stayed the night. The next morning the three of us needed exercise, and
Joshua rushed round the Stanford university campus so fast that we younger
ones had difficulty following. When Robert published his book *Linguistic
imperialism* and some hostile reviews started coming in, Joshua told him
that it is much better to be attacked than ignored.ˍWhen we tried to find a
publisher for our book *Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic
Discrimination*, we had rejections from Blackwell and Cambridge University
Press. The topic was considered irrelevant. Joshua accepted immediately the
book for his Mouton de Gruyter series Contributions to the Sociology of
Language. At a conference organized by Bernard in Tel Aviv (no Arabs
present; the only time we have been in Israel) Joshua and Gella and Robert
and I shared a taxi to Jerusalem – also a fantastic learning experience.



I co-chaired AILA’s Sociolinguistics section with Bernard for several years
in the1980s and also then I learned much from him. When accepting one of
Robert’s articles for a Handbook that he edited, Bernard wrote that he did
not agree with Robert but would not change anything in the article. Later
he visited us on our farm, and our only worry was how we could give him
Kosher food. He relieved us from the worry, and even the breakfast was OK
with müsli, yoghurt, and fruit from our garden. The next meal, the last
occasion when we saw Bernard was in Copenhagen. We had suggested our
favourite vegetarian restaurant, and waited – no Bernard. After an hour we
found out that they had just opened a new restaurant, and Bernard was
sitting there, waiting, equally worried. After the lunch we had a long walk
in Copenhagen, but the only building Bernard really wanted to see was the
Copenhagen Synagogue.



Of course I have read much of what these “cedars of Lebanon” have written,
and keep going back to their books and articles. But the memories of these
remarkable sociolinguistic giants as warm and wonderful people are even
more important.


Tove

-- 

Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, email: SkutnabbKangas followed by @gmail.com;
homepage: www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org. Some recent publications*:*

*1.* Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (TSK), Phillipson, Robert (RP) & Dunbar, Robert
(2019). *Is Nunavut education criminally inadequate? An analysis of current
policies for Inuktut and English in education, international and national
law, linguistic and cultural genocide and crimes against humanity*.
https://www.tunngavik.com/files/2019/04/NuLinguicideReportFINAL.pdf

*2. *TSK (2020). Linguistic Genocide. In Göçek, Fatma Müge & Greenland,
Fiona (eds). *Cultural Violence and Destruction of Communities: New
theoretical perspectives*. Routledge

*3.* Annamalai, E. & TSK (2020). Social justice and inclusiveness through
linguistic human rights in education. In Schalley, Andrea C. and
Eisenchlas, Susana. A. (eds). *Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and
Development. Social and Affective Factors*. Mouton de Gruyter.

*4*. Mohanty, Ajit K. & TSK 2022. Growing up in Multilingual Societies:
Violations of Linguistic Human Rights in Education. In Stavans, Anat &
Jessner, Ulrike (eds). *The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism*.
Cambridge University Press.

*5. *RP & TSK (2022). Communicating in “Global” English: Promoting Human
Rights or Complicit with Linguicism and Linguistic Imperialism. In Miike,
Yoshitaka & Yin, Jing (eds). *The Handbook of Global Interventions in
Communication Theory.* Routledge.

*6. *TSK & RP (eds) (in press). 2023. *Handbook of Linguistic Human Rights.*
Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781119753841.
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