Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

Education and career

Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, with a dissertation entitled "

Havasupai The Havasupai people (Havasupai: ''Havsuw' Baaja'') are an American Indian tribe who have lived in the Grand Canyon for at least the past 800 years. ''Havasu'' means "blue-green water" and ''pai'' "people". Located primarily in an area know ...

songs: a linguistic perspective," written under the supervision of

Margaret Langdon Margaret Langdon (c. 1926 in Louvain, Belgium – October 25, 2005) was a US linguist who studied and documented many languages of the American Southwest and California, including Kumeyaay, Northern Diegueño ( Ipai), and Luiseño. Academic ca ...

. After joining the Berkeley faculty in 1978, Hinton began working with California languages. Hinton specializes in

American Indian languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large nu ...

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of ...

, and

language revitalization Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, o ...

. She has been described as "an authority on how and why languages are being lost, the significance of language diversity, and the ways in which indigenous tongues can be revitalized before it's too late." "She first worked with Native American groups on

bilingual education In bilingual education, students are taught in two (or more) languages. It is distinct from learning a second language as a subject because both languages are used for instruction in different content areas like math, science, and history. The ...

, orthographic design and literature development. Hinton is a director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (SCOIL), and also participates in language revitalization efforts and organizations, including the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and its biennial Breath of Life conferences, for which she is a consulting board member. In collaboration with Andrew Garrett, Hinton has also directed a project to digitize many of the SCOIL records, which are now available through the

California Language Archive California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. Hinton was involved in the creation of the

Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program The Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program is a program to help younger community members learn their language of heritage with fluent elders in the community, typically in the form of a summer program. The program was developed by Leanne Hi ...

while working with indigenous language speakers in California.

Awards and achievements

In 2006, Leanne Hinton was awarded a Cultural Freedom Award, which honours individuals who support communities in upholding diversity, cultural freedom and creativity, from the

Lannan Foundation The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the Lannan Foundation. Established in 1989, the awards are meant "to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional ...

. In 2012, she was awarded the Language, Linguistics, and the Public award from the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: '' Language'' ...

Published works

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References

External links

Hinton's home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinton, Leanne Linguists from the United States Language revival University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty American social sciences writers Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area People from Alameda County, California Living people Native American language revitalization Linguists of Algic languages Linguists of Havasupai–Hualapai Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Women linguists 1941 births American women academics