{{short description|American linguist (1951–2017)}} {{lead too long|date=January 2018}}
'''Deborah Sue Schiffrin''' (May 30, 1951 – July 20, 2017)<ref>{{cite web|title=Deborah Sue Schiffrin: View Obituary|url=http://www.sagelbloomfield.com/obituaries/Deborah-Schiffrin/#!/FamilyTreeDates|language=en}}</ref> was an American linguist who researched areas of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, producing seminal work on the topic of English discourse markers.<ref>Simone Müller, 2005. Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. John Benjamins. p. 29.</ref><ref>Claudia Marcela Chapetón Castro. “The Use and Functions of Discourse Markers in EFL Classroom Interaction” [Los usos y las funciones de los marcadores del discurso en la interacción en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera] Profile, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp. 57–77 (2009).</ref><ref>Lieven Buysse, 2010. Discourse Markers in the English of Flemish University Students. In, Witzcak-Plisiecka, Iwona (Ed.), Pragmatic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1: Speech Actions in Theory and Applied Studies. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, p. 461.</ref>
Born and raised in Philadelphia,<ref>Alexandra Johnston, "Deborah Schiffrin", ''The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics'', November 5, 2012.</ref> she earned a B.A. in sociology from Temple University (1972),<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2017/07/21/memoriam-deborah-schiffrin|title=In Memoriam: Deborah Schiffrin|date=July 21, 2017|website=Linguistic Society of America|publisher=Georgetown University Linguistics Department}}</ref> an MA in sociology also from Temple University (1975),<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://faculty.georgetown.edu/schiffrd/index_files/page0006.htm|title=Background|website=faculty.georgetown.edu|access-date=2017-12-07|archive-date=2017-11-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116060431/http://faculty.georgetown.edu/schiffrd/index_files/page0006.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> and her PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania (1982) under the supervision of William Labov.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8307360|title=Discourse Markers: Semantic Resource for the Construction of Conversation |pages=1–484|first=Schiffrin |last=Deborah |date=July 30, 1982|website=Repository.upenn.edu|access-date=August 2, 2017}}</ref> Schiffrin taught at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and at the University of California in Berkeley California.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Johnston|first=Alexandra|date=2001|title=Schiffrin,Deborah (1951–)|journal=The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics|pages=5059–5062}}</ref>
Throughout her career, Schiffrin wrote four books, edited five books, published over 51 articles and book chapters,<ref name=":0" /> and supervised 44 successful Ph.D. dissertations, plus acted as a reader on 35 more.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://faculty.georgetown.edu/schiffrd/index_files/cvlong.doc|title=Deborah Schiffrin CV|website=Faculty.georgetown.edu|access-date=2017-07-30|archive-date=2017-07-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170730232539/http://faculty.georgetown.edu/schiffrd/index_files/cvlong.doc|url-status=dead}}</ref> She served on the faculty at Georgetown University from 1982 to 2013 teaching sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, serving as chair of the department from 2003 to 2009.<ref name=":1" /> As department chair, Schiffrin designed the department's Masters in Language and Communication program.<ref name=":1" />
Schiffrin served on the editorial board of academic journals including ''Language in Society, Journal of Pragmatics, Language and Communication, Discourse Processes, Pragmatics'', ''Discourse Studies,'' and ''Storyworlds'',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fabula.org/actualites/storyworlds-a-journal-of-narrative-studies_28639.php|title=Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies|first=Équipe de recherche|last=Fabula|website=Fabula.org|date=June 2009 |access-date=July 30, 2017}}</ref> as well as the John Benjamins Publishing Company's academic book series Pragmatics and Beyond New Series.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_9027253838.pdf|title=The Dynmaics of Language Use|website=Npu.edu.ua|access-date=2017-07-30|archive-date=2017-07-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731044438/http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_9027253838.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>
From personal words spoken with Alexandra Johnston, Schiffrin stated that the three main influential people of her academic career were, Noam Chomsky, William Labov, and Erving Goffman.<ref name=":0" /> Thus, her areas of interest included sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language interaction, narrative analysis, grammar in interaction, language and identity, and discourse and history.<ref name=":0" /> Her expertise however lay within discourse markers.<ref name=":0" />
== Discourse markers == Schiffrin's main area of study was discourse markers.<ref name=":0" /> She looked at several different characteristics of discourse markers including: syntactic position, grammatical, stress, phonological reduction, and tone.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse|last=Muller|first=Simone|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company|year=2005|isbn=978-9027253811|editor-last=Jucker|editor-first=Andreas|volume=138|location=Amsterdam/Philadelphia|pages=4–5}}</ref> She conducted her analysis by interviewing primarily Jewish Americans in Philadelphia about their lives.<ref name=":0" /> Her interview methods consisted of oral narratives produced by the participants,<ref name=":0" /> (for more detail on Shiffrin's work with narrative analysis see the following section below).
== Narrative analysis and discourse analysis == Schiffrin contributed to the understanding of both narrative analysis and discourse analysis by analyzing oral narratives produced by various Jewish Americans living in the Philadelphia area.<ref name=":0" /> These oral narratives consisted of naturally occurring stories in everyday interactions, life stories, and oral histories.<ref name=":0" /> She analyzed these different types of oral narratives for features of argument, sociolinguistic construction of identity, the retelling (how a single story is retold for different situations and/or purposes), how grammar serves communication, and change over time (how the story is retold over time and/if features of the story are changed).<ref name=":0" />
In the 1990s Schiffrin and a team received a grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the different ways that people indicate what they are communicating, in which Schiffrin served as lead investigator.<ref name=":0" /> From this investigative work Schiffrin developed and published her book ''Approaches to Discourse'' in 1994.
=== Approaches to Discourse (1994) === Approaches to Discourse (1994) exemplifies how discourse analysis uses methods from other disciplines, besides just linguistics, including anthropology, sociology, and philosophy.<ref name=":0" /> The book compares and contrasts several different approaches of linguistic analysis in relation to discourse including: speech theory, pragmatics, conversation analysis, ethnography, interactional sociolinguistics, and variation analysis.<ref name=":0" /> Within each approach described, Schiffrin includes her own analysis of the narratives used above in order to illustrate the similarities and differences of the various approaches.<ref name=":0" />
==Death== Dr. Schiffrin died on July 20, 2017, aged 66. At the time of her death, she was living in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.<ref name=":0" /> She was survived by her husband, Dr. Louis Scavo, and their children, David and Laura Scavo, of Bethesda, Maryland.<ref>{{cite news|title=In Memoriam: Deborah Schiffrin|url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2017/07/21/memoriam-deborah-schiffrin|access-date=August 3, 2017|publisher=Linguistic Society of America|date=July 21, 2017}}</ref>
== Speeches and addresses == {{overly detailed|section|date=July 2020}} * 1981 Some relationships between discourse order and coherence. University of Pennsylvania, Cognitive Science Colloquium. * 1982 Some semantic and pragmatic functions of discourse markers. Washington Linguistics Society, Washington D.C. * 1984 Pragmatic coordinators of talk. University of Pennsylvania, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1985 The empirical basis of discourse pragmatics. Ferguson-Greenberg Lecture Series in Sociolingusitcs and Language Universals. Stanford University. * 1985 Framing truth and sincerity in argument. Panel on "Frame Analysis" (organized by Bambi Schieffelin) American Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington D.C. * 1985 The work of our words: From meaning to action. "Vital Signs" Series in Semiotics. Johns Medical Institutions. * 1987 Sociolinguistic approaches to discourse: Toward a synthesis and expansion. Keynote Address at New Ways of Analyzing Variation XVI. * 1990 The proximal/distal temporal axis. Northwestern University, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1990 Variation in anaphoric ''then''. Stanford University, Linguistics Colloquium. University of California, Davis, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1991 Approaches to topic in discourse. Keynote speaker at 26th Annual Mid-America Linguistics Conference'','' Oklahoma. * 1991 Clause order and discourse structure. University of Delaware, Linguistics. * 1992/1991 Everyday descriptions: The structure of lists in discourse. University of California, Berkeley, Cognitive Science Colloquium. * 1992 Sociolinguistic studies of narrative. A Quarter century retrospective in honor of William Labov's ''Social Stratification of English in New York City''' Annual Meeting of American Dialect Society Tribute to William Labov, Philadelphia PA. * 1992 Deixis and topic in discourse. University of California, Berkeley, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1993 The transformation of experience and identity in narrative. University of Colorado, Boulder, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1993 Genre and topic. Stanford University, Linguistics Colloquium. * 1995 Narrative as self-portrait. Georgetown University Linguistics Society I, Washington D.C. * 1996 The interactive construction of space discourse. Discourse, language and conceptual structure II, SUNY Buffalo. * 1996 Participation frameworks in argument. Georgetown Linguistics Society II. * 1997 Locating 'there' in language, text, and interaction. University of Southern California Linguistics colloquium. Keynote address NWAVE XXVI, Quebec City, Canada. * 1998 Identity in a Holocaust survivor's life story Panel on "language and Identity," AAAL, Seattle Washington. * 1999 Narrative and memory in Holocaust discourse. Conference on Narrative and Memory, Georgetown University. * 2000 The past and future of discourse analysis. "Plenoquium," at NWAVE XXVIII, East Lansing, Michigan. * 2000 A Linguistic approach to oral histories. Fellows' Seminar, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. * 2001 Language and history: The Narrative connection. Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics. * 2003 Redoing Structure to retell a story. Panel on Discourse and Grammar (organized by Deborah Tannan), Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. * 2003 Changing participation frameworks in a retold narrative. Panel on Positioning (Organized by Michael Bamberg) at American Association of Applied Linguistics, Annual Conference, Washington D.C. * 2004 Life, language and the pursuit of narrative. LISO, University of California, Santa Barbara. * 2005 Saying it again. Goldtrap. Talk in Humanities, Iowa State University. * 2007 The "local" and "global" in Holocaust oral histories. Georgetown Linguistic Society: Language and Globalization Panel on Transnational Discourse. Georgetown University. * 2007 Old Languages in New Stories, Transcending Boundaries: Jewish Languages, Identities and Cultures, Georgetown University; Society for the Study of Narrative, International Meeting, Washington D.C.
==Publications (selected)== <!-- ISSNs and ISBNs needed --> * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1974. Handwork as ceremony: The case of the handshake. Semiotica, 12(3). 189–202 (Reprinted in A. Kendon (Ed.). (1981). ''Nonverbal Communication, interaction, and gesture''. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1977. Opening Encounters. ''American Sociological Review''. 42(4), 671–691 * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1980. Meta-talk: Organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. ''Sociological Inquiry'' 50(3–4), pp. 199–236. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1981. Tense variation in narrative. ''Language'', pp. 45–62. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1984. Jewish argument as sociability. ''Language in society'' 13(3), pp. 311–335. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1985a. Conversational coherence: the role of well. ''Language'', pp. 640–667. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1985b. Everyday argument: The organization of diversity in talk. ''Handbook of discourse analysis'' 3, pp. 35–46. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1986. Functions of and in discourse. ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 10(1), pp. 41–66. * Schiffirin, Deborah. 1987. ''Discourse Markers.'' Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1988. Discourse markers <ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hs7J-WqPtPAC&q=schiffrin+deborah&pg=PR8|title=Discourse Markers|first=Deborah|last=Schiffrin|year=1988|publisher=Cambridge University Press|access-date=30 July 2017|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0521357180}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2007/05/i_mean_to_say.html|title=Change of Subject: I mean to say...|website=Blogs.chicagotribune.com|access-date=30 July 2017}}</ref> * Fasold, Ralph and Deborah Schiffrin, eds. 1989. [https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/cilt.52/main ''Linguistic Change and Variation''], benjamins.com; accessed July 30, 2017. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1990. The management of a co-operative self during argument: The role of opinions and stories. ''Conflict talk.'' pp. 241–59. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press. (Reprinted in J. Corner and J. Hawthorn (Eds.). (1993). ''Communication studies: A reader.'' London, England: Edward Arnold.) * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. ''Approaches to discourse.'' Oxford, England: Blackwell. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996a. Interactional sociolinguistics. ''Sociolinguistics and language teaching'' 4. pp. 307–28. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996b. Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. ''Language in society'' 25(2). 167–203. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 1998. Approaches to discourse. ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 3(29). 355–359. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2001a. Discourse markers: Language, meaning, and context. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), ''The handbook of discourse analysis'' 1. 54–75. Oxford, England: Blackwell. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2001b. Language, experience and history: What "happened" in World War II. ''Journal of Sociolinguistics'', 5(3), 323–352. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2001c. Language and public memorial: "America's concentration camps." ''Discourse and Society'', 12, 505–534. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2002. Mother and friends in a Holocaust survivor oral history. ''Language in Society,'' 31(3), 309–354. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2006a. In other words: Variation in reference and narrative. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. * Schiffrin, D. 2006. [https://books.google.com/books?id=VLKt5Hs1Ir0C&dq=schiffrin+deborah&pg=PA341 ''In other words: Variation in reference and narrative''], vol 21, Cambridge University Press. * Schiffrin, Deborah. 2006b. From linguistic reference to social identity. In De Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin & Michael Bamberg. 2006c. [https://books.google.com/books?id=a6ObMPzv9cgC&dq=schiffrin+deborah&pg=PA166 ''Discourse and identity''], vol 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press * Bamberg, Michael, Anna De Fina & Deborah Schiffrin. 2007. [https://books.google.com/books?id=TWo6AAAAQBAJ&dq=schiffrin+deborah&pg=PR1 ''Selves and identities in narrative and discourse''], vol 9. John Benjamins Publishing. * Bamberg, Michael, Anna De Fina & Deborah Schiffrin. 2011. [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_8 ''Discourse and identity construction. Handbook of identity theory and research'', pp. 177–99], Springer Publishing. * Tannen, Deborah, Heidi E. Hamilton & Deborah Schiffrin. 2015. [https://books.google.com/books?id=e3fCCAAAQBAJ&dq=schiffrin+deborah&pg=PA222 ''The handbook of discourse analysis''], John Wiley & Sons.
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [https://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-3206/ Notice of death] and * [http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/schiffrd/?action=viewresearch&PageTemplateID=360 Profile], georgetown.edu; accessed July 30, 2017. * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deborah-Schiffrin/e/B000APQBOY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 Amazon page]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiffrin, Deborah}} Category:1951 births Category:2017 deaths Category:Linguists from the United States Category:American women linguists Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:Temple University alumni Category:Georgetown University faculty Category:Place of death missing Category:Educators from Philadelphia Category:American women academics Category:21st-century American women