Gillian Elizabeth Sankoff (born March 6, 1943) (pronounced /ˈɡɪliən/) is a Canadian-American sociolinguist, and professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.
She earned her PhD in 1968 from McGill University, with a dissertation entitled, "Social aspects of multilingualism in New Guinea.
[3][4] Her contributions to the development of the variationist approach to sociolinguistics are documented in interviews featured in Tagliamonte's[5] (2015) history of the field.
She was married to Canadian mathematician David Sankoff, then to Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman from 1981 to his death in 1982, and subsequently married American sociolinguist William Labov in 1993.
A special panel in her honor was organized as part of the NWAV 41 (2012) conference held at Indiana University.