Ricardo Otheguy is professor of Linguistics at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. His publications in theoretical linguistics are in the areas of Spanish linguistics, functional grammar, and the Spanish of the United States. His publications in applied linguistics have been in the area of bilingual education and the teaching of Spanish to native speakers of Spanish.

He has been a Fulbright visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay, a visiting researcher in the School of Foreign Languages at the University of Havana, Cuba, and a researcher in residence at the Translators and Interpeters Services Team, also in Havana, Cuba.

Professor Otheguy is the founding director of the new CUNY Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society, which conducts basic and applied research in urban linguistics, bringing to bear the research resources of the City University of New York on urban language issues. He is currently co-principal investigator a research project funded by the National Science Foundation on leveling and differentiation of dialect differences in the Spanish spoken in New York.

He is the author of numerous research papers that have appeared in the major research journals and anthologies. He is co-editor of Language Across Cultures/Cultures Across English: A reader in cross cultural communication. He has developed textbook materials for the teaching of Spanish to Latino students in the United States, and is co-author of Tu Mundo: Curso para hispanohablantes, and of Prueba de ubicación para hispanohablantes. He has also written Spanish materials for English speaking students, and is co-author of the most widely used high school Spanish textbook in the U.S., En español.

He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the City University of New York (1976), as well as degrees and diplomas in Spanish from Louisiana State University, the City College of New York, and the University of Madrid, Spain.