William Alexander Stewart

William Alexander Stewart (September 12, 1930 – March 25, 2002) was a linguist specializing in creoles, known particularly for his work on African American Vernacular English.

Stewart was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Scottish parents, and grew up speaking four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hawaiian). At the age of 8, he moved with his family California. His parents were killed in a car crash one year later, and he was raised by his father's parents.

He served as an army translator before enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees.

Working for the Center for Applied Linguistics, Stewart undertook pioneering work on creoles in the Caribbean in the early 1960s.

In 1965, he discovered that reading problems of some African-American children were caused not by vocabulary or pronunciation, but by differences between the grammar of African American Vernacular English and standard English. In the late 1960s, he explored the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, introducing the notions of polycentric languages, autonomy and heteronomy.