Henry Allan ‘Al’ Gleason, Jr. (April 18, 1917 – January 13, 2007) was a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.
Gleason began studying at Hartford Seminary in 1938 and received his PhD in 1946. His 1961 text “Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics” (with an accompanying workbook) was described in the journal Language as a suitable update to Leonard Bloomfield’s well-known textbook Language. Gleason retired in 1982.
According to Henry Gleason, language is a system of arbitrary, oral or vocal and written symbols by means of which a social group operates.
