[Edling] Passing of Joshua A. Fishman

[Myrna Goldstein]

Moving. Thank you for sending this around.

Myrna

On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Francis Hult <francis.hult at englund.lu.se>
wrote:

>  *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 Shv*el. 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.
>
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>


-- 
Myrna Goldstein, B.S.J., MATESL
Founder, Director
Are You in Your English File?®
Second Language Learning Research Center
Eilat, Israel, formerly of Milan, Italy
e:  myrnaenglishfile at gmail.com
Skype:  myinmi
t: 00972 (0)53 5255360
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