Margins
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved
John Hamilton McWhorter (Professor McWhorter uses neither his title nor his middle initial as an author) is an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His research specializes on how creole languages form, and how language grammars change as the result of sociohistorical phenomena. A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas
Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America
2008
2023
2003
2004
The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care
2003
2013
2019
Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars
2007
Self-Sabotage in Black America
2000
2012
English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever
2021
The Untold History of English
2008
The Story of Us in Seven Little Words
2025
Language and Dialect in America
2000
Truths About America's Lingua Franca
2016
2018
Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language
2014
A Natural History of Language
2001
2004
1994
And What It Isn't and What It Could Be
2011
Beyond the Crisis in Black America
2005
How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America
2021
Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English
1998
Why English Won't-and Can't-Sit Still
2016