26.1159, All: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman (18 July 1926 - 1 March 2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-1159. Mon Mar 02 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.1159, All: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman (18 July 1926 - 1 March 2015)

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1)
Date: 02-Mar-2015
From: Francis Hult [Francis.Hult at englund.lu.se]
Subject: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman
2)
Date: 02-Mar-2015
From: Ghil'ad Zuckermann [ghilad.zuckermann at adelaide.edu.au]
Subject: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman (18 July 1926 - 1 March 2015)

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2015 11:58:25
From: Francis Hult [Francis.Hult at englund.lu.se]
Subject: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman

 
From: Ofelia Garcia [ogarcia at gc.cuny.edu]

Joshua A. Fishman (1926-2015) 

A beloved teacher and influential scholar, Joshua A. Fishman passed away
peacefully in his Bronx home, on Monday evening, March 1, 2015. He was 88
years old. Joshua A. Fishman leaves behind his devoted wife of over 60 years,
Gella Schweid Fishman, three sons and daughters-in-law, nine grandchildren and
two great-grandchildren. But he also leaves behind thousands of students
throughout the world who have learned much from him about sociology of
language, the field he founded, and also about the possibility of being a
generous and committed scholar to language minority communities. As he once
said, his life was his work and his work was his life.

Joshua A. Fishman, nicknamed Shikl, was born in Philadelphia, PA, on July 18,
1926. Yiddish was the language of his childhood home, and his father regularly
asked his sister, Rukhl, and him: “What did you do for Yiddish today?” The
struggle for Yiddish in Jewish life was the impetus for his scholarly work.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a Masters degree in
1947, he collaborated with his good friend, Max Weinreich, the doyen of
Yiddish linguistics, on a translation of Weinreich’s history of Yiddish. And
it was through Yiddish that he came to another one of his interests - that of
bilingualism. In 1948 he received a prize from the YIVO Institute for Yiddish
Research for a monograph on bilingualism. Yiddish and bilingualism were
interests he developed throughout his scholarly life.

After earning a PhD in social psychology from Columbia University in 1953,
Joshua Fishman worked as a researcher for the College Entrance Examination
Board. This experience focused his interest on educational pursuits, which
eventually led to another strand of his scholarly work – that on bilingual
education. It was around this time that he taught what came to be the first
sociology of language course at The City College of New York. In 1958, he was
appointed associate professor of human relations and psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania, and two years later, moved to Yeshiva University.
At Yeshiva University he was professor of psychology and sociology, Dean of
the Ferkauf Graduate School of Social Science and Humanities, Academic Vice
President, and Distinguished University Research Professor of Social sciences.
In 1988, he became Professor Emeritus and began to divide the year between New
York and California where he became visiting professor of education and
linguistics at Stanford University. In the course of his career, Fishman held
visiting appointments at over a dozen universities in the USA, Israel, and the
Philippines, and fellowships at the Center for Advanced study (Stanford), the
East West Center (Hawai’i) the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and the Israel Institute for
Advanced Study.

Throughout his long career Joshua A. Fishman has published close to one
hundred books and over a thousand articles. He has not only been prolific, but
his original and complex ideas have been very influential in the academy, as
well as extremely useful to language minorities through the world. His first
major study of sociology of language, Language Loyalty in the United States,
was published in 1964. A year later, he published "Yiddish in America." In
1968, he published the earliest major collection dealing with language policy
and management, "Language problems of developing nations." In the same year,
he edited and published "Readings in the sociology of language," a first
attempt to define the new field.

By the 1970s Joshua Fishman’s scholarship was recognized throughout the world
for its importance and its relevance about the language issues prevalent in
society. In 1973, he founded, and has since edited, "The International Journal
of the Sociology of Language," a journal of excellent international
reputation. Joshua Fishman has also edited a related book series published by
Mouton, "Contributions to the Sociology of Language (CSL)," with over 200
titles. In both of these endeavors Fishman has encouraged young scholars to
research, write and publish, supporting and contributing to the academic
careers of many throughout the world, especially in developing countries. For
years he replied daily to letters and e-mails from students from all over the
world. His greatest motivation has been dialoguing with many about the use of
language in society and answering student questions. The world was his
classroom.

While conducting an impressive body of research, and being responsive to the
many who asked for advice, Fishman traveled extensively, encouraging the
activities of those seeking to preserve endangered languages. He will be
remembered by the Māoris of New Zealand, the Catalans and Basques of Spain,
the Navajo and other Native Americans, the speakers of Quechua and Aymara in
South America, and many other minority language groups for his warmth and
encouragement. For a quarter-century, he wrote a column on Yiddish
sociolinguistics in every issue of the quarterly Afn Shvel. He also wrote
regularly on Yiddish and general sociolinguistic topics for the weekly
Forverts. Together with his wife Gella Fishman, he established the extensive
five-generational ''Fishman Family Archives'' at Stanford University library.
In 2004 he received the prestigious UNESCO Linguapax Award in Barcelona,
Spain. 

Joshua Fishman’s prolific record of research and publication has continued
until today, defining modern scholarship in bilingualism and multilingualism,
bilingual and minority education, the relation of language and thought, the
sociology and the social history of Yiddish, language policy and planning,
language spread, language shift and maintenance, language and nationalism,
language and ethnicity, post-imperial English, languages in New York, and
ethnic, and national efforts to reverse language shift. 

His scholarly work with minority groups and with others engaged in the
struggle to preserve their languages, cultures, and traditions has been
inspired by a deep and heartfelt compassion that is always sustained by the
markedly human tone of his most objective scholarly writing.
 


Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable


-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2015 11:58:25
From: Ghil'ad Zuckermann [ghilad.zuckermann at adelaide.edu.au]
Subject: Obituary: Joshua A. Fishman (18 July 1926 - 1 March 2015)

 
Joshua A. Fishman (18 July 1926 - 1 March 2015)

Seven Jews have changed the world. Moses said: "Everything is in the head!"
Jesus said: "Everything is in the heart!" Marx said: "Everything is in the
stomach!" Freud said: "Everything is in the groin!" Fishman said: "Everything
is in the tongue!" Zuckerberg said: "Everything is in the finger!" Einstein
said: "Everything is relative!" 

Success is relative. But Joshua A. Fishman Z''L, hypocoristically a.k.a.
Shikl, has set an absolute standard. Only in the dictionary does “Success”
come before “Work”. And Fishman’s more than 80 books and 1000 articles
demonstrate his Herculean commitment to scholarship since his first
publications in the original Yiddish journal "Yugntruf" in 1945, which he
co-founded with contact linguist Uriel Weinreich. 
If William Labov (L'above and beyond) is the founder of micro-sociolinguistics
(cf. variationist sociolinguistics), Fishman is the founder of
macro-sociolinguistics (cf. sociology of language), which consists inter alia
of the analysis of language education, language planning, bilingualism,
multilingualism, minority languages and language revival. Fishman is a
sociologist who could be considered a "hyphenated linguist", perspicaciously
investigating fascinating and multifaceted issues such as language and
religion (theo-linguistics), language and nationalism, language and identity,
and language and ethnicity. 
As Weinreich et al. insightfully note, "linguistic and social factors are
closely interrelated in the development of language change. Explanations which
are confined to one or the other aspect, no matter how well constructed, will
fail to account for the rich body of regularities that can be observed in
empirical studies of language behavior" (1968: 188). 

The founder and general editor of the leading, pioneering refereed publication
"International Journal of the Sociology of Language," Fishman created an
intellectual platform that has greatly facilitated the introduction and
dissemination of novel models and revolutionary theories that have led to
numerous academic debates, syntheses and cross-fertilizations. He has often
acted as an epistemological bridge between, and antidote for, parallel
discourses. 

One ought to assess the breadth and depth of Fishman's work through a combined
Jewish-sociolinguistic lens. Like Uriel Weinreich, Fishman's research embodies
the integration of Jewish scholarship with general linguistics. Fishman (1981,
1985) himself explores the sociology of Jewish languages from a general
sociolinguistic point of view. But I would also advocate a bilateral impact:
Jewish linguistics, the exploration of Jewish languages such as Yiddish, has
shaped general sociolinguistics. Throughout history Jews have been
multilingual immigrants, resulting in Jewish languages embodying intricate and
intriguing mechanisms of language contact and identity. These languages were
thus fertile ground for the establishment and evolution of the sociology of
language in general. 

Given the importance in Judaism not only of mentshlikhkayt (cf. humaneness)
but also of education and "on the other hand" dialectics, it is not surprising
to find the self-propelled institute Fishman trailblazing simultaneously both
in Yiddish scholarship in particular and in the sociology of language in
general. 

In the field of Yiddish studies proper, Fishman's contribution has been
immense and far-reaching. He was co-editor of "For Max Weinreich on his
seventieth birthday" (1965), co-translator of the English language publication
(1979–1980) of the first two volumes of Weinreich’s seminal "Geshikhte fun der
Yidisher Shprakh" [History of the Yiddish language], and editor of "Studies on
Polish Jewry, 1919–1970: the interplay of social, economic and political
factors in the struggle of a minority for its existence" (1974). Closer to his
expertise are the impressive and important "Never say die! A thousand years of
Yiddish in Jewish life and letters" (1981), and his outstanding
sociolinguistic biography of Nathan Birnbaum: "Ideology, society and language:
the odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum" (1987). 

Fishman has lived up to Sapir’s verdict: ''Language is a guide to 'social
reality'. Though language is not ordinarily thought of as of essential
interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our
thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the
objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily
understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which
has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion
to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language
and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems
of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real
world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of
the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as
representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies
live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels
attached.'' (Sapir 1921: 162) 

Fishman’s plethora of direct contributions to specific areas of
sociolinguistics and Jewish languages are impressive (see Schweid Fishman
2012). Their impact, however, on other scholars, on our sense of the
possibilities for further research, and on the generation of yet-unanswered
new questions, is exponentially greater. To take one example, Fishman’s work
on reversing language shift and on language revival and maintenance (e.g.
1991, 2001), is the basis for the emerging new trans-disciplinary field of
enquiry of what I call 'revivalistics' (see also ''Revival Linguistics'',
Zuckermann and Walsh 2011). Complementing documentary linguistics,
'revivalistics' analyses comparatively the universal mechanisms and
constraints involved in language reclamation, revitalization, renewal and
empowerment world-wide. 'Revivalistics' is in its infancy simply because the
reclamation of sleeping beauty tongues is a relatively young activity. I am
currently involved with the resurrection of several hibernating Aboriginal
languages in the 'Lucky Country' down under, Australia. Israeli, the beautiful
hybrid that emerged in the Promised Land, and which has so far been relatively
the most successful reclamation, is only 120 years old. 

Shikl will always be remembered for his gargantuan labour and perspicacious
insights. He is survived by the indefatigable and extraordinarily-dedicated
Gella Schweid Fishman, to whom I wish biz hundert un tsvantsik!, Yiddish for
''[may you live] until 120 years!''  Serendipitously but appropriately,
Tolkien's Quenya name for ''fish'' is lingwe.

REFERENCES
Fishman, Joshua A. 1981. The sociology of Jewish languages from the
perspective of the general sociology of language: a preliminary formulation.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 30. 5–18. 
Fishman, Joshua A. 1985. The sociology of Jewish languages from a general
sociolinguistic point of view. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the
sociology of Jewish languages, 3–21. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 
Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing language shift: theoretical and empirical
foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon (UK): Multilingual
Matters. 
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 2001. Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing
language shift, revisited: a 21st century perspective. Clevedon (UK):
Multilingual Matters. 
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New
York: Harcourt & Brace. 
Schweid Fishman, Gella 2012. Joshua A. Fishman bibliography (1949–2011),
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 213. 
Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov & Marvin Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations
for a theory of language change. In W. P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (eds),
97–195. Directions for historical linguistics. Austin: University of Texas
Press. 
Zuckermann, Ghil’ad & Michael Walsh. 2011. Stop, revive, survive!: Lessons
from the Hebrew revival applicable to the reclamation, maintenance and
empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures. Australian Journal of
Linguistics 31(1). 111–127. 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxon.), Chair of Linguistics
and Endangered Languages, School of Humanities,
The University of Adelaide,
Adelaide SA 5005, Australia
ghilad.zuckermann at adelaide.edu.au
http://www.zuckermann.org/
http://adelaide.academia.edu/zuckermann/
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/ghilad.zuckermann
http://www.facebook.com/ProfessorZuckermann
 


Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics



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