ABSTRACT This article presents correspondences with Roger W. Shuy carried out from February 2025 to March 2026. Shuy is a linguist known for his pioneering work in Forensic Linguistics since the 1980s. Prior to that, during the 1970s and 1960s, Shuy played a founding role in the development of US Sociolinguistics, especially advancing sociolinguistic approaches to African American Vernacular English, reading, and literacy. Working with William Labov, amongst other originators in the field, Shuy carried out an early exemplar of sociolinguistic fieldwork in Detroit (Michigan) from 1966 to 1967, then set up and served as the head of two of the first sociolinguistics programmes in the United States, one at the Center for Applied Linguistics from 1967 to 1970, the other at Georgetown University from 1968 to 1987. The interview focuses upon these early years of Sociolinguistics and the emergence of sociolinguistic approaches to literacy during the 1960s and 1970s.
Jamie Duncan (Tue,) studied this question.