Renowned sociolinguist passes away
Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington alumnus and honorary doctorate recipient, Dr Bernard Spolsky, has passed away at the age of 90. Dr Spolsky was a renowned sociolinguist.
Dr Spolsky’s connection with the University began with his Master of Arts and continued throughout his life. Even after moving overseas, Dr Spolsky continued to regularly give talks at the University and associated conferences, including the Te Kura Roa conference organised by Deputy-Vice-Chancellor Māori Professor Rawinia Higgins. He also maintained lifelong connections with University staff, including marae elder Te Ripowai Higgins and former professor and director of the English Language Institute, Emeritus Professor Graeme Kennedy.
After graduating from Te Herenga Waka, Dr Spolsky taught at a school in Gisborne. As a teacher there he gained insights into the language education needs of Māori students.
“He wrote a lot about Māori and had a sound understanding of grassroots initiatives such as Te Ataarangi (which engages Māori in learning te reo Māori in safe environments like homes and marae). Not many linguistic scholars knew about these things and often omitted them in their work,” says Dr Vini Olsen-Reeder, senior lecturer in Te Kawa a Māui. “The irony of that, is they missed everything Māori were doing. Bernard, however, did not.”
Dr Spolsky studied Māori language revival throughout his career. In 2000 he was a visiting research fellow in the International Research Institute for Indigenous and Māori Education at the University of Auckland, and in 2005 he published a chapter ‘Māori Lost and Regained’ in Languages of New Zealand (Victoria University Press).
Dr Spolsky also maintained an interest in other minority languages, including New Zealand Sign Language, according to Associate Professor Rachel McKee, programme director for NZSL Studies at the University. Earlier in his career, he was director of the Navajo Reading Study, a project to teach Navajo children in New Mexico and Arizona through their own language.
Emeritus Professor John Read, who was Dr Spolsky’s PhD student and a research assistant on the Navajo Reading Study, says Dr Spolsky was, in his opinion, one of Te Herenga Waka’s most accomplished alumni in the field of linguistics.
Dr Spolsky also contributed to many major linguistic initiatives throughout his career. He built a department of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, was the founding secretary of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and co-launched the well-known linguistics journals Applied Linguistics and Language Policy.
Before his passing, Dr Spolsky was an Emeritus Professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he established the Language Policy Research Centre. During his career, Dr Spolsky taught and studied at several prestigious universities and institutions across the globe, including McGill University, Indiana University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Montreal, and the National Foreign Language Center in Washington.
Dr Spolsky has over 200 publications to his name, including more than 30 books.
Dr Spolsky’s extensive achievements have been acknowledged with lifetime membership of the Linguistic Society of America, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Mellon fellowship, and a lifetime achievement award from the International Language Testing Association, as well as the honorary doctorate he received from Te Herenga Waka in 2008.