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Dell Hathaway Hymes (bornJune7, 1927 in Portland, Oregon) is a sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist whose work has dealt primarily with languages of the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology" instead of "anthropological linguistics." The terminological shift draws attention to the field's grounding in anthropology rather than in what by that time was already become an autonomous discipline (linguistics).

He was educated at Reed College, studying under David H. French, and graduated in 1950 after a stint in pre-war Korea.Hiswork in the Army as a decoder is part of what influenced him to become a linguist. Hymes earned hisPh.D. from Indiana University in 1955,[1] and took a job atHarvard University.

Even at that young age, Hymes had a reputation as a strong linguist; his dissertation, completed in one year, was a grammar of the Kathlamet language spoken near the mouth of theColumbiaand known primarily from Franz Boas’s work at the end of the 19th century.

Hymes remained at Harvard for five years, leaving in 1960 to join the faculty of the University of California,Berkeley. He spent five years at Berkeley as well, and then joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 (where he succeeded A. Irving Hallowell). In 1972 he joined the Department of Folklore and Folklife and became Dean of Graduate Studies in Education in 1975.

He has been President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1982, the American Anthropological Association in 1983, and the American Folklore Society - the last person to have held all three positions. While at Penn, Hymes was afounderof the journal Language in Society. Hymes later joined the Departments of Anthropology and English at the University of Virginia, where he became the CommonwealthProfessor of Anthropology and English, and from which he retired in 2000. He is now emeritus faculty.

His wife, Virginia Hymes, is also a sociolinguist and folklorist.