<div dir="ltr">I am so sorry to hear this.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Michael Lempert <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mlemp@umich.edu" target="_blank">mlemp@umich.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Dear All,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Deborah
Tannen asked that I share this news with our community.</span></p>
<br>
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Michael
Lempert<br>
</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Notice of
the passing of Deborah
Schiffrin</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">With
heavy hearts, we share the sad news that Professor Emerita
Deborah Schiffrin
passed away early on the morning of Thursday July 20. Professor
Schiffrin was a
treasured member of the Georgetown University linguistics
department faculty
from 1982 to 2013, and served as department chair from 2003 to
2009. In that
capacity, she designed and oversaw the department’s Masters in
Language and
Communication. During her years on the faculty, she rose to a
position of
international prominence in our field, helped found and define
the field of
discourse analysis, and mentored many doctoral students who went
on to become
prominent in their own right. <br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span>Debby Schiffrin received her BA in
sociology from Temple
University and her PhD in linguistics from the University of
Pennsylvania,
where she studied with William Labov and Erving Goffman, giants
in the fields
of linguistics and sociology respectively. Her work combined the
fine-grained
analysis of linguistics with sociology’s attention to social
forces at work in
society. This combination was evident, for example, in her study
of personal
narratives told by survivors of the Holocaust and of the United
States’
internment of Japanese-Americans.<span>
</span></span></p>
<p class="m_-3270775915276582852MsoCommentText"><span><br>
</span></p>
<p class="m_-3270775915276582852MsoCommentText"><span>In her first book, <i>Discourse
Markers,</i> based on her
dissertation, she coined the term that became standard in the
field, and
launched what became a fertile subfield of linguistics, as
innumerable articles
and dissertations were written, and continue to be written, on
discourse
markers in </span><span><span> </span>English as
well as many </span><span>other
languages.<span> </span>In her second
book, <i>Approaches to
Discourse</i>, she showed how
different branches of discourse analysis approach the study of
conversation. It
immediately became and remains a foundational text in the field.<span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="m_-3270775915276582852MsoCommentText"><span> </span></p>
<p class="m_-3270775915276582852MsoCommentText"><span>Professor
Schiffrin was among the
first linguists to pay close attention to the way people tell
stories in
conversation, </span><span>becoming one
of the most prominent scholars to examine the role of language
in displaying
and constructing identity in narrative</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">, as in her
article “Narrative as
self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity,” and
several volumes
of collected papers on narrative that she co-edited. Her work on
these and many
other topics continue to be widely cited. </span></p>
<p class="m_-3270775915276582852MsoCommentText"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>All who knew,
worked with, or studied with Deborah Schiffrin know that her
brilliant
intellect was matched by her quietly unassuming manner
and unfailing
kindness. She will be sorely missed. Condolences may be sent to
her husband, Dr.
Louis Scavo, and her children, David and Laura Scavo, at 5125
Baltan Road,
Bethesda, MD 20816.<span> </span>In
lieu of flowers,
the family suggests that donations may be made in her memory to
The Alzheimer’s
Association </span><a href="http://www.alz.org/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">http://www.alz.org/</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> A memorial
will be held at
Georgetown in the fall. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Deborah Tannen and Heidi Hamilton</span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<pre class="m_-3270775915276582852moz-signature" cols="72">--
michael lempert | anthropology | michigan</pre>
</font></span></div>
<br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
Linganth mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Linganth@listserv.linguistlist.org">Linganth@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a><br>
<a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/linganth" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.<wbr>org/mailman/listinfo/linganth</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>