Impact
Fishman has written over 1000 articles and monographs on multilingualism, bilingual education and minority education, the sociology and history of the Yiddish language, language planning, reversing language shift, language revival, 'language and nationalism', 'language and religion', and 'language and ethnicity'. Fishman is also the founder and editor of the Contributions to the Sociology of Language (Mouton de Gruyter) book series.
"The founder and general editor of the leading refereed publication International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Fishman created an intellectual platform that has greatly facilitated the introduction and dissemination of novel models and revolutionary theories that have led to numerous academic debates, syntheses and cross-fertilizations. He has often acted as an epistemological bridge between, and antidote for, parallel discourses."
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "one ought to assess the breadth and depth of Fishman’s work through a combined Jewish-sociolinguistic lens." Zuckermann argues that "Fishman’s research embodies the integration of Jewish scholarship with general linguistics. Jewish linguistics, the exploration of Jewish languages such as Yiddish, has shaped general sociolinguistics. Throughout history Jews have been multilingual immigrants, resulting in Jewish languages embodying intricate and intriguing mechanisms of language contact and identity. These languages were thus fertile ground for the establishment and evolution of the sociology of language in general. Given the importance in Judaism not only of mentshlikhkayt (cf. humaneness) but also of education and 'on the other hand' dialectics, it is not surprising to find the self-propelled institute Fishman trailblazing simultaneously both in Yiddish scholarship in particular and in the sociology of language in general."
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