Wolfram was born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1941.[5] His parents were German immigrants.[6] He attended and graduated from Olney High School,[7] where he played baseball, basketball, and football.[8][9] He received his B.A. in anthropology (Greek) in 1963 from Wheaton College, where he played football and basketball.[9] He received his M.A. in linguistics from Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1966, and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1969, studying under Roger Shuy.
In 1993, Wolfram formulated the principle of linguistic gratuity, which states that "investigators who have obtained linguistic data from members of a speech community should actively pursue ways in which they can return linguistic favors to the community".[11] In 2008, he and co-authors outlined venues for engaging in linguistic gratuity, including "video documentaries, oral history CDs, museum exhibits, formal curricular programs, and popular trade books on language differences,"[12] venues through which Wolfram himself has engaged in collaborative engagement via the Language and Life Project (see below).
Language and Life Project
Wolfram directs the Language and Life Project, a nonprofit at North Carolina State University dedicated to documenting and celebrating language diversity through public means.[13] He established the Language and Life Project in 1993.[13] Through the Language and Life Project, Wolfram has been involved in the production of television and film documentaries about dialect diversity (often in collaboration with Neal Hutcheson), as well as the construction of museum exhibits, the publication of popular books, and the development of dialect awareness curricula for schools and the general public.[14][13]
Documentaries
Wolfram was executive producer for the Language and Life Project documentary film First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee (2014), produced and directed by Danica Cullinan and Neal Hutcheson.[15] The documentary chronicles the history of the Cherokee language in North Carolina and the efforts of the Eastern Band of Cherokee to save and preserve their endangered language. The film was awarded Best Public Service Film at the 2014 American Indian Film Festival.[16] In 2015, PBS selected the documentary for national distribution, making it available for broadcast at member stations in 2016.[17] In 2016, film won a regional Emmy in the documentary/cultural category at the 30th Midsouth Emmy Awards.[18]
Wolfram has co-authored and co-edited multiple books written for the general public, including: Hoi Toide on the Sound Soide: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue (1997 UNC Press), co-authored with Natalie Schilling; American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast (Wiley 2005), co-edited with Ben Ward; Talkin' Tar Heel: How our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina (2014 UNC Press), co-authored with Jeffrey Reaser; and The Five-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages, 3rd Edition (Equinox 2019).[21]
Talkin' Tar Heel explores regional, social, and ethnic dialects of North Carolina, drawing upon decades of research and thousands of recorded interviews with North Carolinians.[22][23] The book was written for the general audience, with the goal of "shar[ing] knowledge and respect for the languages and dialects in North Carolina in a readable, audible, and visual format accessible to the public."[24] It is first popular linguistics book to embed more than 100 video and audio clips through the use of QR codes.[25] The book was awarded the 2014 North Caroliniana Book Award by the North Caroliniana Society.[26]
^Wolfram, Walt. 1969. Linguistic correlates of social differences in the Negro Community. In James Alatis (ed.), Georgetown Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics No. 22, 249 57.
Wolfram, Walt and Jeffrey Reaser. 2014. Talkin' Tar Heel: How our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina. Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press.