Jan Blommaert

Jan Blommaert is a Professor of African Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Ghent University. He has also worked at the University of London's Institute of Education and at the University of Antwerp. In 1993 he was awarded the Ark Prize for Free Speech for his articles on the ethnic minority issue. His books include 'Het Belgische migrantendebat. De pragmatiek van de abnormalisering' (1992, with Jef Verschueren), 'Debating Diversity. Analysing the rhetoric of tolerance' (1998, with Jef Verschueren), 'Ik stel vast. Politiek taalgebruik in het tijdperk van vernieuwing' (2001), 'Ethnography, discourse and hegemony' (2003, with James Collins, Monica Heller, Ben Rampton, Stef Slembrouck and Jef Verschueren), 'Populisme' (2004, with Eric Corijn, Marc Holthof and Dieter Lesage).

Jan Blommaert (4 November 1961 – 7 January 2021) was a Belgian sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist, Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of the Babylon Center at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He also held appointments at Ghent University (Belgium) and University of the Western Cape (South Africa). He was considered to be one of the world's most prominent sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists, who had contributed substantially to sociolinguistic globalization theory that focuses on historical as well as contemporary patterns of the spread of languages and forms of literacy, and on lasting and new forms of inequality emerging from globalization processes.read more on Wikipedia...