Bentley University Bio of Dan Everett
‘Daniel L. (Dan) Everett holds a ScD and a Masters of Linguistics from the Universidade Estadual in Campinas (UNICAMP), both based upon years of field research among the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon jungle. He taught as an instructor and later Assistant Professor at UNICAMP, 1981-1986, until leaving Brazil to return to the USA. He next was appointed full professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also chaired the Department of Linguistics until 1999. At that time, Dan moved to the Amazon to live the majority of the next three years in the jungle among the Pirahãs. He left the jungle when the University of Manchester, England, offered him the position of Professor of Phonetics and Phonology. Following several years in England, Dr. Everett spent the 2005-2006 academic year as a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He went on to chair the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University from 2006 – 2010. From 2010-2018 he served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University. He is currently Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley. Everett has lived in the Amazonian jungle for nearly eight out of the last thirty years, studying more than a dozen little or never previously studied Amazonian languages. He has published more than 100 scientific articles as sole author and eleven books. In 2008 his book, Don’t Sleep There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, was published in eight languages, becoming a best-seller in English, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, and German. That book was selected by National Public Radio in the US as one of the best books of 2009. It was also selected by Blackwells booksellers in the UK as one of the best books in the UK for 2009. Everett’s book, Language: The Cultural Tool, was published in 2012. It has been reviewed in various publications, published in four languages, and was a NY Times Editor’s Choice. Dan has appeared numerous times on the BBC and NPR, and has been profiled in newspapers around the world. A documentary about his life and work, The Grammar of Happiness, was released in 2012. Everett’s recent books are Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious, with University of Chicago Press and How Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention, with Liveright Books. Everett’s books are published in many languages. He is now finishing the first major intellectual biography of Charles S. Peirce ever done, to be published by Princeton University Press.’
Austin Howard is pursuing a doctorate in linguistics @FloridaState. He specialises in the intersection of cognitive science, anthropology and language sciences, using fieldwork to elucidate the interaction of culture and cognition. He is an ardent fan of poetry, theatre and language-learning. Puns and all forms of humour keep his mind sharp and his spirits high. Austin is an avid collector and taster of teas and other infusions. His masters and internships were completed in the Netherlands (MA from Radboud University Nijmegen @radboud_uni) subsequent research assistantship at @leidenhumanities and Austria (Austrian Academy of Sciences @OEAWVideo ). His recent work has taken him from the edges of Anatolia to the rainforests of the Amazon.
Listeners/viewers may also enjoy the work of Daniel Everett on the Pirahã (perhaps one day he’ll feature on this podcast). Also on this podcast, both Nick Emlen and Janis Nuckolls have discussed Quechua and Kichwa, respectively from Perú and Ecuador, both part of the larger Quechuan family, spread both before and after the rise of the Inca in the Andes, and now being spoken along the Andes but also into Amazonia.
What happens when a missionary sets out to spread the gospel—only to have his worldview transformed by the very people he came to convert? In this captivating lecture excerpt, we explore the life and work of Daniel Everett, the controversial linguist whose time with the Pirahã people in the Amazon rainforest led him to challenge one of linguistics’ most sacred theories: Noam Chomsky’s concept of universal grammar.
Everett’s bold claims shook the academic world and sparked heated debates across anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy. But his story goes far beyond theory—this is a deeply human journey about belief, culture, language, and transformation.
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