[Linganth] Notice of the passing of Deborah Schiffrin

[Bonnie Urciuoli]

I am so sorry to hear this.

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Michael Lempert <mlemp at umich.edu> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
> Deborah Tannen asked that I share this news with our community.
>
> Michael Lempert
>
>
>
> Notice of the passing of Deborah Schiffrin
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> In her first book, *Discourse Markers,* 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  English as well as many other languages.  In her second book, *Approaches
> to Discourse*, she showed how different branches of discourse analysis
> approach the study of conversation. It immediately became and remains a
> foundational text in the field.
>
>
>
> Professor Schiffrin was among the first linguists to pay close attention
> to the way people tell stories in conversation, becoming one of the most
> prominent scholars to examine the role of language in displaying and
> constructing identity in narrative, 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.
>
>
>
> 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.  In lieu of flowers, the family
> suggests that donations may be made in her memory to The Alzheimer’s
> Association http://www.alz.org/  A memorial will be held at Georgetown in
> the fall.
>
>
>
> Deborah Tannen and Heidi Hamilton
>
> --
>
> michael lempert | anthropology | michigan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linganth mailing list
> Linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/linganth
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20170724/b1b90c6f/attachment.htm>