![]() ![]() formalizability: language can be described through formal (or quasi-formal) rule systems. ![]() reducibility: the diversity of observed utterances in any domain of linguistic phenomena are realizations of a much more restricted template (grammar, underlying forms, phonological structure, etc.), capturable in a unique analytical metalanguage, where cultural and cognitive diversity bottom out.objectivity: there is a fact of the matter about the structure of language: a unique and unambiguous level of semantic content a unique representation of syntactic and phonological structure a unique information structure, and so on.uniformity: the biological identity of the human species is reflected in the fundamental identity (commensurability) of human languages.Īssumptions about linguistics’ relation to language.rationalism: speakers and hearers are to be understood as essentially rational agents (the emotional dimension of personhood, by contrast, unambiguously playing second fiddle).individualism: as a cognitive or psychological faculty, language is understood to be, at base, an individual phenomenon.If we had to detail these assumptions, we might come up with a list like this: This emerges clearly in the assumptions that students are encouraged to assimilate when they are instructed in the discipline’s basic concepts and procedures. Ideological critique of linguistics, especially of ‘core’ domains like grammar, phonology, semantics and pragmatics, has often focussed on what we might call the discipline’s overwhelming individualistic rational universalism. But we are nevertheless a part of the body politic, and our professional activities influence it in various ways. ![]() ![]() Like other academic corporations, linguists probably mostly have a strong sense of their own distinctness. Not just that, though: linguists who identify with the ‘vague form of liberal progressiveness’ mentioned by Hutton, or whose political sympathies lie further to the left, have an interest in thinking not just about how social and political factors influence linguistics, but also about how what they do as linguists might feed back into the societies to which they belong. Reflection on both, however, is important, in the interests of disciplinary self-awareness at least. Linguistics’ scientistic pretensions act as a strong brake on any attempt even to think in critical terms about the epistemic status of the discipline’s results, let alone to explore the field’s wider political effects or determinants. Linguists have, in fact, on the whole been strikingly reluctant to direct against their own discipline the kinds of critique that swept over the rest of the humanities in the final third of the last century. There’s been little shortage of critical discussion of linguistics’ ideological and political valencies, though it has often come from sources other than linguists themselves. But how might other aspects of linguistics as an institution fit, or not, into this frame? What can we say about how linguistics might relate to characteristic progressive priorities like support for diversity, opposition to discrimination and domination, commitment to democracy, and to the overall political contexts in which efforts to advance those priorities are situated? As such, they are compatible with the ‘vague form of liberal progressiveness’ that Hutton (2001: 295) has identified as the ethos of contemporary linguistics. Initiatives like Glossa or Language Science Press are much-needed, and all too rare, instances of scholarly activism against the widespread ‘enclosure’ of knowledge characteristic of our age (Riemer forthcoming). What connections might linguists’ professional activities have to politics? Most recently, the question has been posed by the collective self-dismissal of the Lingua board and the journal’s metamorphosis into the open-access Glossa – a welcome attempt to break the monopoly of profiteering multinationals over the dissemination of research. ‘Study, because we’ll need all your intelligence’. Gramsci studied linguistics and wrote about linguistic topics throughout his life. Antonio Gramsci, a co-founder of the Italian Communist Party and one of the twentieth century’s most prominent intellectuals. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |