Le sociolinguiste Joshua Fishman est mort
hier à son domicile du Bronx. J’avais fait sa connaissance lors d’un colloque à
Ottawa en 1986. Plus récemment, dans ce blog, je me suis inspiré d’un de ses
textes (« Le marteau de Fishman »).
Voici le texte qu’a publié l’une de ses
collaboratrices et qui résume l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Joshua Fishman :
A beloved teacher and
influential scholar, Joshua A. Fishman passed away peacefully in his Bronx
home, on Sunday 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.
Ofelia
García
Professor
Ph.D. Programs in Urban Education
Graduate Center
The City University of New York
Professor
Ph.D. Programs in Urban Education
Graduate Center
The City University of New York
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