David Crystal (born Lisburn, Northern Ireland, 1941) is a British linguist who studies the English language. Through his many books and lectures around the world, he has become one of the best-known voices on English today, having authored, co-authored or edited more than a hundred books.
He was born in Lisburn while his mother was staying there after being evacuated during the Blitz, but he grew up with her in Holyhead, in North Wales, and in Liverpool, where he attended St Mary's College from 1951. His parents separated before he was one, and for most of his childhood he knew little about his father. He studied English at University College London between 1959 and 1962, then worked as a researcher under Randolph Quirk on the Survey of English Usage.
He went on to lecture at Bangor University and the University of Reading, and is now an honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor. His interests range from English language teaching and forensic linguistics to language death, style, Shakespeare and lexicography. He coined the term "ludic linguistics" for the study of language play. Having left full-time academia, he works as a writer, editor and consultant, and has contributed to BBC broadcasts.
His popular books use graphics and short essays to present technical material in an accessible way. He argues that English is both splitting and converging towards a shared world standard of spoken English, and he values the diversity of its varieties. He has also written poetry, plays and biographies, and has promoted the study of internet linguistics. His lasting contribution lies in bringing the study of English to a wide public.
Key works
- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1987): a broad survey of human language written for general readers.
- Language and the Internet (2001): an early study of how the internet is changing writing and communication.
- The Stories of English (2004): a general history of the English language and its diversity.
- Spell It Out (2013): explains why English spelling is so hard to master.
Curiosities
A wartime birth
He was born in Lisburn because his mother had been evacuated there during the Blitz. He grew up, however, in Wales and Liverpool.
A father he did not know
His parents separated before he turned one. For most of his childhood he knew little about his father, and later learnt about Samuel Crystal's life through work contacts and a half-brother.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.