LINGUIST List 17.1846
Wed Jun 21 2006
Disc: RE: Disc: Linguists and the Journals Nature, Science
Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer
<sawyerlinguistlist.org>
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1. Paul
Chapin,
RE: Disc: Linguists and the Journals Nature, Science
Message 1: RE: Disc: Linguists and the Journals Nature, Science
Date: 17-Jun-2006
From: Paul Chapin <pchapinalum.mit.edu>
Subject: RE: Disc: Linguists and the Journals Nature, Science
I'm not an officer of AAAS Section Z, but I have been active in it, and in AAAS affairs more generally, and I have a couple of remarks in response to Annie Zaenen's posting.
The first is that the journal _Science_ operates with complete editorial independence, so neither Section officers nor AAAS officers can control the journal's content.
Second, it would be entirely appropriate for the Section Z officers, or any linguist who is a member of AAAS, for that matter, to write to the Editor of _Science_, Don Kennedy, and express concerns of the kind Geoff Pullum and others have raised, about inadequately informed discussions of linguistic issues. Identification of specific instances would of course be important in such a letter. I'm not speaking about a letter for publication, but a letter calling the Editor's attention to a problem.
Let me add a more general comment about AAAS. Its meetings are by design not targeted at specialists in any field (which is what I take Zaenen to mean by having 'little of direct interest' for linguists). Rather, they provide up-to-date, intelligible presentations of current hot topics across the sciences, for the benefit of scientists in other fields and science journalists. Anyone attending such a meeting does better to go to sessions outside his or her own field. I for one consistently find them of great interest.
Section Z is not one of the larger AAAS Sections, but I believe it is not the smallest either. And, importantly, it has been quite successful in organizing sessions at the Annual AAAS meeting over the past decade, sessions that have served to introduce linguistic science to the broader scientific community in a way that I consider unmatched by other efforts to accomplish this. I encourage other linguists to participate in it and help increase its influence.
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
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