Lee Arnold Pederson

1930 - 2015

Lee Arnold Pederson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English Emeritus at Emory University, died peacefully on May 6, 2015. A family service, officiated by Father John Kieran, was held in Atlanta on May 17.
Born to Peder and Gertrude Pederson on September 17, 1930 in St. Louis, Lee was raised in Chicago. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after finishing high school and earned the Korean service medal with two bronze stars. He then graduated from Northern Illinois University with a BA and an MA in English. He earned a PhD in English at the University of Chicago under the direction of Raven McDavid. Lee began his teaching career at the University of Minnesota. He moved to Emory University in 1966, where he became an important figure in American lexicography. He published well over one hundred articles, reviews, and books between 1959 and his last publication in 2013, a book co-authored with Philip Baker on the language of St. Kitts and Nevis. He worked as an American dialect consultant to the British/American Bloomsbury Dictionary. His publications include The Pronunciation of English in Metropolitan Chicago (1966) and "The Language of Uncle Remus" (Modern Philology, 1985) which remains one the best treatments of language in the stories of Joel Chandler Harris. He also wrote the essay "Language, Culture, and the American Heritage" in the American Heritage Dictionary (1992) and the "Dialects" chapter for The Cambridge History of the English Language (2002), the major handbook on the history of the English language. He retired from Emory in 2007.
At Emory, Lee developed and directed the monumental Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS: seven volumes, 1986-1992, University of Georgia Press; Basic Materials and Concordance, University Microfilms, 1981, 1986). LAGS is a record of Southern language that maps and preserves the regional and social dialects of eight Southern states. The project draws from 5,200 hours of tape-recorded interviews, painstakingly collected from individual subjects across the south between 1968 and 1980. His Manual for Dialect Research in the Southern States (with Billiard, Leas, and Bassett, second edition, 1974, University of Alabama Press) still serves as the classic handbook for linguistic atlas research.
Lee was an extraordinary man. His generosity to family, students, and friends was inspiring. He was a passionate teacher and learner and his curiosity, intellect and energetic outlook on life never faltered. He will be sorely missed.
Lee was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife Judith. He is survived by his daughter Nora, her husband Paul Sites and their sons Thomas and Nicholas of Atlanta, and by his son Thomas and his wife Mukang of Decatur, Georgia. Donations in his memory may be sent to his favorite charity, St. Rita of Cascia High School, 7740 South Western Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60620.