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David Crystal 'The future of language' The end of the twentieth century was a revolutionary period for language and languages. The acknowledgement of the first truly global language, English, coincided with a realization of the crisis affecting the world's endangered and minority languages, and the arrival of a new technology, the Internet, offered an ambiguous role in relation to both these themes. For professionals working with language, things are never going to be the same again. Bio David Crystal read English at University College London (1959-62). He joined academic life as a lecturer in Linguistics, first at Bangor, then at Reading where he held a chair for 10 years. He is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. A prolific author, best known for his work in English language studies, he published his first of a hundred or so books in 1964. Recent works include The Stories of English (2004), Pronouncing Shakespeare (2005), The Fight for English (2006), and By Hook or by Crook: a Journey in Search of English (2007). David Crystal is perhaps best known for The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. He was founder-editor of the Journal of Child Language, Child Language Teaching and Therapy, and Linguistics Abstracts, and he has edited several book series, such as Blackwell's Language Library. He has also been a consultant, contributor, or presenter on many radio and television programmes and series. In the 1980s, he became editor of general encyclopedias for Cambridge University Press - work that continues in the present decade under the auspices of Penguin Books. In relation to this activity, in the 1990s he devised a linguistically based knowledge management system, currently marketed and developed by Crystal Reference Systems, where he serves as the R&D Director. These days he divides his time between work on language and work on general reference publishing. Professor Crystal received an OBE for services to the English language in 1995, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000. David Crystal's website has more details on his life and works.
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