John Russell Rickford

John Russell Rickford (born September 16, 1949) is a Guyanese-American linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, specializing in African American Vernacular English and sociolinguistics[1][6]. He co-authored the American Book Award-winning book *Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English* with his son Russell J. Rickford[1]. Rickford was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1992[5].