LINGUIST List 5.643

Fri 03 Jun 1994

Disc: Linguistics and popular publications

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Rachel Lagunoff, Re: 5.588 Linguistics and popular publications
2. Falk Yehuda, Language in the popular press

Message 1: Re: 5.588 Linguistics and popular publications

Benji Wald writes:

> If you want to solve the misperception/ignorance of linguistics (and language)
> problem write COMPREHENSIBLE popular books.

I thought Steven Pinker did just that. Yet newspaper columnists who've read
his book still misunderstand what "grammar" is. People don't tend to write
columns disagreeing with Asimov, S.J. Gould or Stephen Hawkings. It seems
to me that the difference is that since everyone speaks a language,
they have opinions about what language is and how to use it. Physics or
evolution may be abstract, but what's so abstract about language?

Writing angry letters to the editor may not solve this problem, but writing
funny and informative ones, as I took Leila Gleitman to be proposing, couldn't
hurt. Of course there are some linguists who don't want to talk to or write
for a popular audience -- there are some who don't even want to teach under-
graduate courses -- but so what? There are many who do. In January Edith
Moravcsik compiled a list of "bedtime readings" in linguistics, most of which
are geared towards the general reader. But perhaps what we really need to
get the word out is a language columnist who is a linguist. (I'll volunteer
for the job after I finish my dissertation.)

Rachel Lagunoff

I would like to echo Benji Wald's call (in 5.588) for linguists to write some
non-technical stuff on language and linguistics, in order to get some
appropriate attitudes about language into the public consciousness. It has
bothered me for some time that there is nothing of the kind out there,
although (like everyone else, I suppose) I have not found the time to do
anything about it. In the long run, however, it is the only way to get our
message across.

 --Yehuda N. Falk