William Labov is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...

. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics. He is employed as a professor in the linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 department of the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology

Dialectology

Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...

.
Born in Rutherford, New Jersey

Rutherford, New Jersey

Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 18,061. It is an inner-ring suburb of New York City, located west of Midtown Manhattan....

, he studied at Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (1948) and worked as an industrial chemist (1949–61) before turning to linguistics.