Rate My Professor David Maurer

David Warren Maurer earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Ohio State University in 1935 after completing his undergraduate studies there as an English major. Immediately following his doctorate, he was appointed as a professor in the Ohio State University English department. In 1937, he transitioned to the University of Louisville, where he served as a professor of English and linguistics until his retirement in 1972, teaching courses including first-year composition, Shakespeare, and linguistic problems in various American subcultures. Born on April 12, 1906, near New Philadelphia, Ohio, Maurer graduated first in his high school class in 1924 and initially attended Hanover College before transferring to Ohio State. His early research began with a summer job on a North Atlantic trawler, leading to his first publication, 'Schoonerisms: Some Speech Peculiarities of the North-Atlantic Fishermen' in 1930.

Maurer's scholarly work centered on sociolinguistics, particularly the argots and dialects of marginalized American subcultures such as criminals, drug addicts, moonshiners, racetrack gamblers, prostitutes, jazz musicians, and Trappist monks. He conducted extensive fieldwork, interviewing informants in prisons, racetracks, and other settings, documenting over 75 subcultures and demonstrating how language evolves upward from these groups. Key publications include 'The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man and the Confidence Game' (1940), which served as source material for the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film 'The Sting' (1973); 'Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern' (1955); 'Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction' co-authored with Victor H. Vogel (1954); 'The Argot of the Racetrack' (1951); 'Kentucky Moonshine' co-authored with Quinn Pearl (1974); and the posthumously published 'Language of the Underworld' (1981), a collection of 20 articles edited by Allan W. Futrell and Charles B. Wordell. Over his career, Maurer authored more than 200 journal articles, professional papers, and books, establishing foundational contributions to dialectology and the study of underworld language. He relied on memory, shorthand, and later tape recordings transcribed by his wife, Barbara, and burned his field notes to protect his sources. In 1974, he filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the creators of 'The Sting,' which was settled out of court in 1976.