Although his contributions to the study of language are now all but forgotten, Catholic University of America sociologist Paul Hanly Furfey (b. 1896) gave the first known courses on the Sociology of Language starting in 1943. In 1944, he published articles on language and social class, men’s and women’s language, and the Bloomfieldian method of linguistic analysis, and in the early 1950s, he directed the joint dissertation of two of the very first urban dialect researchers to undertake work sufficiently systematic and socially oriented to merit the designation ‘sociolinguistic’ (Putnam & O’Hern 1955). This article surveys Furfey’s career as well as the work of many other pre-1960 contributors to sociolinguistics, notably in North America, most of which fell into oblivion following the great success of William Labov.
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1947 “Social Functions of Language in a Mexican-American Community”. Acta Americana 51.185–202.
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1972Social Functions of Language in a Mexican-American Community. (= Anthropological Papers of the Univ. of Arizona, 22.) Tuscon: Univ. of Arizona Press. [Originally the author’s Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Chicago 1947.]
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(1891–1981). 1935A History of the English Language. New York: Appleton-Century.
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(b.1928). 1966 “Introduction: The dimensions of sociolinguistics”. Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964 ed. by William Bright, 11–15. The Hague: Mouton.
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(b.1934). 1972 “Paul Hanly Furfey: Theorist of American Catholic Radicalism”. The American Ecclesiastical Review 1661.651–677.
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1982American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth century approaches. Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press. [Chap.4: “The Catholic Worker and Paul Hanly Furfey” (130–171).]
Currie, Eva Garcia C.
(b.1912). 1949 “Linguistic and Sociological Considerations of Some Populations of Texas”. Paper presented at Southern Speech Association, Waco, Tx.
Currie, Haver C[ecil]
(b.1908). 1949 “The Relationship of Language to Social Status: An academic paper projecting socio-linguistics”. Paper presented at Conference of Univ. English Teachers, Houston. [Publ. as Currie 1952.]
Currie, Haver C[ecil]
1952 “A Projection of Socio-Linguistics: The relationship of speech to social status”. Southern Speech Journal 181.28–37. (Repr. in A Various Language: Perspectives on American dialects ed. by Juanita V. Williamson & Virginia M. Burke, 391/40–47. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1971.]
Currie, Haver C[ecil]
1980 “On the Proposal of Sociolinguistics as a Discipline of Research”. Language in Society 91.407–411.
Currie, Haver C[ecil] & Eva Garcia C. Currie
1976Sociolinguistics and the Two American Linguistic Orthodoxies. 2nd ed. Austin, Tx.: Regional Research Association. [Mimeographed.]
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1963Loaves and Fishes. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
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DeCamp, David
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Dewey, John
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Dollard, John
(1900–1980). 1937Caste and Class in a Southern Town. New Haven: Publ. for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale Univ. Press; London: H. Milford for Oxford Univ. Press.
Doroszewski, Witold
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Ellis, Marc H.
1981Peter Maurin: Prophet in the twentieth century. New York: Paulist Press.
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Figueroa, Esther
1990Sociolinguistic Metatheory: An utterance based paradigm. Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
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(1890–1960). 1950 “Personality and Language in Society”. Sociological Review 421.37–53. (Repr. in Firth, Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951, 177–189. London: Oxford Univ. Press 1957.)
Fischer, John L[yle]
(b.1923). 1958 “Social Influences on the Choice of a Linguistic Variant”. Word 141.47–56. (Repr. in Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology ed. by Dell Hymes, 483–488. New York: Harper & Row 1964.)
Fishman, Joshua A[aron]
(b.1926). 1967Rev. of Hertzler (1965). Language 431.586–604.
Fries, Charles C[arpenter]
(1887–1967). 1940American English Grammar: The grammatical structure of present-day American English with especial reference to social differences or class dialects. New York & London: Appleton-Century.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
(b.1896). 1919 “Conscious and Unconscious Factors in Symbolism”. Psychological Studies from the Catholic Univ. of America, vol.51: Clinical and psychoanalytic studies ed. by Edward A. Pace. (= Psychological Monographs 27), 349–386.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1926The Gang Age: A study of the preadolescent boy and his recreational needs. New York: Macmillan.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1929aSocial Problems of Childhood. Ibid.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1929bYou and Your Children. New York: Benzinger.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1929cA Selected Bibliography on Child Development. (= Catholic Univ. of America Educational Research Bulletins 4, no.4). Washington, D.C. [Includes nine items under the heading “Speech” (20–21).]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1929d “Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, and the Gestalt”. Thought 41.235–253.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1930The Growing Boy: Case studies of developmental age. New York: Macmillan.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1935 “A Sociologist Looks at Catholic Art”. Christian Social Art Quarterly 2:4.27.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1936Fire on the Earth. New York: Macmillan. (Repr., New York: Arno Press 1978.)
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1937Three Theories of Society. New York: Macmillan.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1942A History of Social Thought. Ibid.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1943 “PLOUSIOS and Cognates in the New Testament”. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, July 1943, 243–263.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1944a “The Sociological Implications of Substandard English”. American Catholic Sociological Review 51.3–9.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1944b “Men’s and Women’s Languages”. American Catholic Sociological Review 51.218–223.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1944c “The Semantic and Grammatical Principles in Linguistic Analysis”. Studies in Linguistics 21.56–66.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1952aAn Outline of Phonetics. Mimeographed. Washington: D.C. Unpublished, 102 pp. [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1952bAn Outline of Phonemics. Mimeographed. Ibid., 45 pp. [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1953The Scope and Method of Sociology. New York: Harper.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1961 “The Need for the Clarification of Basic Concepts: A memorandum from Furfey to [George A.] Lundberg”. Sociological Inquiry 311.107–116. [Thoroughgoing epistemological document on ‘supra-empirical’ positivism vs. ‘empirical’ science, directed at his behaviorist opponent in the ‘Furfey-Lundberg controversy’.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1972The Subculture of the Washington Ghetto. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Social Research, Catholic Univ. of America.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1978Love and the Urban Ghetto. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.
Furfey, Paul Hanly
1987 Interview with Bruce H. Lescher, csc., conducted at Hyattsville, Maryland 15December 1987 Unpublished. [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
Ms.a. “Catholic Social Thought and Action in the United States: An eyewitness account of some developments”. Unpublished. [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
Ms.b. “My Autobiography”. Unpublished. [Other versions entitled “The Light at the End of the Tunnel”.] [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly
Ms.c. Lecture notes for course entitled The Sociology of Language, given at Catholic Univ. of America, 1943[?]. Unpublished. [In Catholic Univ. of America Archives.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly, Martha Anne Bonham & Mae Kathryn Sargent
1930 “The Mental Organization of the Newborn”. Child Development 1.1.48–51. [Holds that newborns are mental ‘blanks’, with mental organization beginning only after the first month of life.]
Furfey, Paul Hanly & Joseph F. Daly
1934The Interpretation of the Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. (= Catholic Univ. of America Educational Research Monographs 8, no. 4). Washington, D.C. [On the mathematical treatment of relationships in the sciences.]
Gauchat, Louis
(1866–1942). 1905 “L’unité phonétique dans le patois d’une commune”. Aus romanischen Sprachen und Literaturen: Festschrift für Heinrich Morf, 175–232. Halle/S.: Max Niemeyer.
Haas, Mary R[osamond]
(b.1910). 1944 “Men’s and Women’s Speech in Koasati”. Language 201.142–149. (Repr. in Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology ed. by Dell Hymes, 228–233. New York: Harper & Row 1964.)
Haugen, Einar [Ingvald]
(b.1906). 1951 “Directions in Modern Linguistics”. Language 271.211–222. (Repr. in Readings in Linguistics: The development of descriptive linguistics in America since 1925 [later changed to: … 1925–56] ed. by Martin Joos, 357–363. Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies 1957.)
Hertzler, J[oyce] O[ramel]
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Hertzler, J[oyce] O[ramel]
1965A Sociology of Language. New York: Random House.
Hodson, T[homas] C[allan]
(1871–1953). 1939 “Socio-linguistics in India”. Man in India 191.94ff.
Hubbell, Allan F[orbes]
(1914–1976). 1950The Pronunciation of English in New York City: Consonants and vowels. New York: King’s Crown Press, Columbia Univ. (Repr., New York: Octagon Books 1972.) [Originally the author’s Ph.D. thesis, Columbia Univ. 1950.]
Hymes, Dell [Hathaway]
(b.1927), ed. 1964 Language in Culture and Society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology. New York: Harper & Row.
Hymes, Dell [Hathaway]
1979 “The Origin of ‘Sociolinguistics’”. Language in Society 81.141.
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Joseph, John Earl
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1989 “Popular and Scientific Beliefs about Language Status: An historical sketch”. Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties ed. by Ulrich Ammon, 243–255. Berlin & New York: Walter de GruyterKoerner
Joseph, John Earl
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Kenyon, John S[amuel]
(1874–1959). 1924American Pronunciation. Ann Arbor: Wahr. [Many new eds. followed; Furfey cites that of 1940.]
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1986 “Aux sources de la sociolinguistique”. Lingvisticae Investigationes 101.381–401. (Repr. in Koerner, Saussurean Studies/Études saussuriennes, 155–174. Geneva: Slatkine 1988.)
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Kurath, Hans
(1891–1992). 1939Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England. Providence: Brown Univ. Press.
Labov, William
(b.1927). 1964 “Phonological Correlates of Social Stratification”. American Anthropologist 66:6, part 21, 164–176.
Labov, William
1966The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington: D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics. [Described (p.iii) as “essentially the author’s 1964 Columbia Univ. dissertation”].
Labov, William
1972Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
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(b.1914). 1980 “A Hispanist Confined to His ‘Inner Castle’: Tomás Navarro Tomás (1894–1979)”. Romance Philology 341, special issue, 98–115.
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(1911–1984). 1946 “Dialect Geography and Social Science Problems”. Social Forces 251.168–172.
McDavid, Raven I[oor], Jr.
1948 “Post-vocalic /-r/ in South Carolina: A social analysis”. American Speech 231.194–203. (Repr. in Hymes 1964, 473–482.)
McDavid, Virginia Glenn
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(1863–1931). 1934Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Ed. with introd. by Charles W. Morris. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. [Cited by Mills 1940 and Barker 1945 as ‘Mead 1928’, but 1934 appears in fact to be the first printed ed.]
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(1916–1962). 1940 “Bibliographical Appendix”. Contemporary Social Theory ed. by Harry Elmer Barnes, Howard Becker & Frances Bennett Barnes, 889–912. New York: Russell & Russell. [Part 4, “Sociology of Language” (895–898).]
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(1877–1969). 1919 “Hypnotic Analogies”. Psychological Studies from the Catholic Univ. of America, vol.51: Clinical and psychoanalytic studies ed. by Edward A. Pace. (= Psychological Monographs, 27), 387–400. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press.
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(1901–1979). 1939Foundations of the Theory of Signs. (= International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, I:2.) Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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1983Group Formation in Social Science. Carbondale, Ill. & Edmonton, Alta.: Linguistic Research.
Murray, Stephen O.
Forthcoming. American Linguistic Theorists and Theory Groups: A social history.
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(b.1914). 1949Morphology: The descriptive analysis of words. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. [1st ed. 1946.]
O’Hern, Edna M.
(b.1919). 1954The Status Significance of the Dialect of an Isolated Urban Group. Ph.D. thesis, Catholic Univ. of America, Washington, D.C. [Directed by Paul Hanly Furfey.]
O’Hern, Edna M.
1971A Phonological Analysis of the Language of Five Black Pre-School Children of Low Socio-Economic Status in Washington, D.C. A Report to the Bureau of Social Research, Catholic Univ. of America, Washington, D.C., July12 1971 Distributed through ERIC. [Project funded by National Institutes of Mental Health grant, conducted in cooperation with the Infant Education Research Project of the Bureau of Social Research, of which Bureau Furfey was co-director.]
Ornstein[-Galicia], Jacob [Leonard]
(b.1915). 1977Rev. of Currie & Currie (1976). Language in Society 61.75–78.
Parsons, Talcott
(1902–1979). 1940 “An Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification”. American Journal of Sociology 451.841–862.
Pickford, Glenna Ruth
1956 “American Linguistic Geography: A sociological appraisal”. Word 121.211–233.
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1951 “Speech and Society: A sociological approach to language”. American Sociological Review 161.499–505.
Putnam, George N[elson]
, M.M. (1909–1991). 1954The Status Significance of the Dialect of an Isolated Urban Group. Ph.D. thesis, Catholic Univ. of America, Washington, D.C. [Directed by Paul Hanly Furfey.]
Putnam, George N[elson], & Edna M. O’Hern
(b.1919). 1955The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect = Language Dissertation, 53 / Language 31, no.4, Part 21, supplement. (= Catholic Univ. of America Studies in Sociology, 40.) Baltimore, Md.: Waverly Press.
Reuss, Marguerite
1943 “1942 Research Census of Members of the American Catholic Sociological Society”. American Catholic Sociological Review 41.47–52.
Ross, Alan S[trode] C[ampbell]
(1907–1980). 1954 “Linguistic Class Indicators in Present-Day English”. Neophilologische Mitteilungen 551.20–56.
Ross, Alan S[trode] C[ampbell]
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1969The Chicago Pragmatists. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Sapon, Stanley M[artin]
(b.1924). 1953 “A Methodology for the Study of Socio-Economic Differentials in Linguistic Phenomena”. Studies in Linguistics 111.57–68.
Sapon, Stanley M[artin]
1957A Pictorial Linguistic Interview Manual. Columbus: American Library of Recorded Dialect Studies, Ohio State Univ.
Sapon, Stanley M[artin]
1958 “A Note on the Gathering and Exchange of Linguistic Data”. Orbis 71.183–185.
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(1898–1986). 1936 “The Social Basis of Linguistics”. Science and Society: A Marxian quarterly 11.18–44.
Serano, Joseph A., O. Praem
1982The Social Mission of the Church in the Writings of Paul Hanly Furfey and John Courtney Murray: Analysis and assessment. Ph.D. diss., Catholic Univ. of America, Washington, D.C. [Directed by Charles E. Curran.]
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