LINGUIST List 5.646

Mon 06 Jun 1994

Disc: The popularization of linguistics

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1. Celso Alvarez Caccamo, The popularization of linguistics
2. , 5.603 The treatment of language in popular publications
3. Richard Hudson UCL, popularisation of linguistics
4. Paul T Kershaw, Popular press problems

Regarding the popularization of linguistics in non-technical
writing, someone in LINGUIST (sorry I forgot the name) proposed,
more or less, "it's time we linguists get out our ideas." What
*are* "our" ideas, anyway? Linguists have been "getting out"
their ideas for centuries now, and the results are hundreds of
fictionaries (it was a typo, but I'll leave it), a pervasive
ideology of linguistic correctness, rationales for the maintenance
of language-based social stratification, imperfect language-teaching
methodologies, the insidious myth of Babel -- and its counterpart,
the search for the Universal Language --, the fossilization of
orally transmitted knowledge, highly incomplete ASCII alphabets,
a noticeable split in the field between "scientists" and
"commentators", and a number of other things -- among them,
I wouldn't be surprised, halitosis and narcolepsy.

Oh, another result is our pathological inability to correct
even the simplest, common misconceptions about language(s), like:

1) Some languages are better than others
2) All languages are equal
3) We need a universal language
4) Spaniards lisp because of a king they once had
5) The French Academy screwed up the natural development of language
6) Meanings can be looked up in dictionaries
7) Bilingualism is bad
8) Bilingualism is good
9) English is the language of the future because it's very flexible
10) Different opinions are just a matter of semantics

So, we do get out our ideas. But we get them out wrong.
While other disciplines knew how to make use of linguistic
metaphors (the "syntax" of art, the universe as "text," the
"emic/etic" distinctions in behavior), we still need to find
the right metaphors. Like: language is a hypercube.

Celso Alvarez-Caccamo
Linguistica Geral e Teoria da Literatura, Univ. da Corunha, Galiza (Spain)
lxalvarzudc.es

I have watched this discussion growing with considerable bemusement. I would
suggest that anyone who is puzzled about the consequences of attempts to make
linguistics comprehensible to nonlinguists take a look at my career. If you
have never heard of me and can't imagine what I'm referring to, that is
precisely my point.

I am on Benji Wald's side. Linguistics needs to stop being The Secret
Science. It's disgraceful that our Foreign Service defined "linguist" (on
National Public Radio) as "someone who speaks a language other than English."
But elitist attitudes -- and a lack of anything remotely approaching a
community -- breed precisely that result. As for Asimoving our way through
this, all the other sciences require scrupulous attention in science fiction
writing, because readers know the basics, but when lin- quistics is the
subject ANYTHING goes. That there could be a single "Martian" language.....
that you could go back in time two centuries and only the slang would be
different ... that a device like the "Universal Translator" is perfectly
reasonable ... you name it. I keep plugging away at this, but I could sure
use some help.

 Suzette Haden Elgin

>From a British perspective, the discussion seems to have missed the main
point. I don't think the problem lies at all in the supply of good accessible
popular books. We're actually very well supplied with such books to
especially if you compare the situation now with what it was say 20 years
ago. The problem seems to me to lie elsewhere: in our schools. (Again I'm
speaking from a British perspective; I'm aware that things are very different
in parts of Europe, but I have the impression that they're similar in USA.)
Our schools don't (in general - there are encouraging exceptions and new
developments) teach children abI#ut language; i.e. they don't teach
linguistics. In contrast every child studies some science, so there's a
well-prepared market for popular science.

My conclusion is that the really important goal to work towards is the
introduction of linguistics (call it `language') into secondary and
primary schools. A lot of the things I teach to my first-year undergraduates
are things they could have learned easily at age 13; and there's lots of
linguistics that could be done at age 7. There are two main problems in
the UK: that the existence of the subject `English' in the curriculum kids
people into thinking that something like `language' is already in place
(whereas it's really dominated by literature); and that few school teachers
have the expertise needed to teach linguistics.

Just think what our university courses would look like if they built on
training that had started at age 7, like most other university subjects!


Dick Hudson
Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
(071) 387 7050 ext 3152

Rachel Lagunoff suggests that one obstacle towards getting linguistic
views across to the general public is that, unlike with the case of
physics, e.g., people tend to have strong opinions about language,
whereas they don't about physics. I disagree. People DO have strong
opinions about physics, the strongest being that it's too difficult
to understand, that it's important, and that we should be grateful
when a physicist takes the time to try to explain things. I didn't
find anything particularly elucidating about A Brief History of Time
(in general, I found it dry -- I read it for a course in which we
all covered Russell, which was both more accessible and more interesting).
Much of the appeal of ABHoT, I think, stems from the Appeal to Authority
fallacy -- since Hawking is an expert, then he must be right. The
question, then, is why Appeal to Authority doesn't work for us linguists.
(1) Many of the so-called hard sciences have gotten where they are
socially by suppressing the opposing viewpoint. Consider the issue of
the origin of species, and the infamous Creationist/Evolutionist argue-
ment. Creationism is a valid viewpoint, and one still held by many
rational people throughout the world (myself not included). It also
happens to be an illegal viewpoint to teach in many schools throughout
the U.S. Science, by creating a rift between itself and philosophy and
religion (all of which, as far as I'm concerned, are the same thing),
has made itself the ultimate expert and the final source of all truth.
This suppression is not necessarily the fault of the originally
researchers -- Galileo, DesCartes, and Darwin were all trying to support
their Church in their own ways, while correcting what they saw as
fundamental problems with their Church's teachings.
(2) An important distinction was made by another poster -- the linguist's
views are, in general, minority views. We are fighting against an
ethnocentric worldview which is reinforced (not always deliberately)
by the public education system. Prescriptivism has its strong points;
like it or not, in order to do business, there is an acceptable style
of speech which should be mastered. This is societal nonsense, to be
sure, just as much as hairlength and clothing is societal nonsense,
but it will only change when enough laypeople go out on a limb and
risk social acceptance in order to be themselves. So, for now, SAE
is taught in the schools, but doing so is NOT the same as saying that
SAE is superior to other dialects of English. But this is a difficult
concept to get across to people, and is also perhaps one of the more
deeply embedded beliefs held by the layperson. The more that they're
exposed to composition course requiring formal SAE, the more the belief
that SAE is "right" is reified, whether or not the teacher says it is.
(3) Persuant to (1) and (2), people will generally see what they want
to see, even if it's the opposite of what is there.
(4) Finally, in my own experience, prescriptivism as it is taught has
turned a lot of people off to learning about language. When I try to
discuss language, I have gotten some downright hostile reactions,
usually because the person is used to being told that their language
use is wrong and that (therefore) their beliefs about language are
wrong. So our being "experts" might even work against us.

I think it's wrong to say that linguistics is impaired just because
language is something everybody uses. Tossing a ball involves
physics, and most people have tossed a ball in thier lifetimes. It's
BECAUSE physics has removed itself to the abstract that people are
willing to listen to experts. The problem is, how can we as linguists
present our views in a way that will get listened to without (a) trying
to supplant the opposing viewpoints or (b) making the field of language
study so abstract that our views are the only views? Certainly some of
our ranks have done a good job of making linguistics incomprehensibly
arcane, falling into the same trap that other sciences have fallen into.
But we do a disservice in doing so.

I think the regular newspaper column (Ask the Linguistics Person) might
be a good idea, but how do we get a newspaper to take it? Certainly
more popular books might help. But we must be careful not to just
repeat what society expects us to. I haven't read Tannen's book
(although I've flipped through it); I DID read Tannen's article in
Newsweek recently (5/16), and it seemed like little more than saying what
the masses wanted to hear (the longer article which it accompanied
was even worse about pandering): men and women converse differently
on computers, and treat computers differently, and that's the way it
always has been, and that's the way it always will be. This is a
simplistic reading of the article, one aggravated by a sensationalistic
accompanying graphic and a cartoonish cover illustration. (Although,
speaking cynically, Appeal to Authority might finally be working --
the cover story was Tannen's article, which was a one page story
accompanying a much longer piece.)

There -- that's my $.02. I could go on for pages, but perhaps I should
leave it at that.

-- Paul Kershaw, Michigan State University