A query...

[Mark P. Line]

Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote:
> I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by
> Claire.  Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible
> documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have
> invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted.  If the
> kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it
> seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing
> the best documentation of a language, since these activities would
> ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars.

Actually, if tenure decisions are based on antequated and unscientific
premises, then it must be the case that we can and must argue in favor of
giving tenure to young scholars who do good science.

Giving tenure to young scholars who do good science does seem to be a
concept that has worked fairly well in other fields, so maybe we should
try it in linguistics. Of course, linguistics is still crawling out of a
decades-long period during which scientific method had no place in the
mainstream -- so we're still playing catch-up for time lost.

Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we
think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog.


> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure
> committees to consider these kinds of activities.  In the short term,
> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does
> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no?  And
> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi...

I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I think
that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science,
any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in
tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical
dilemma, just a biographical choice.

I'm rather close to this issue, because I had to make the choice in my
early twenties. The likelihood of me getting a university job in
linguistics and being allowed to spend my time doing good science was so
slim in the mid 1970's, I wound up pursuing a career outside of
linguistics until a few years ago.


> Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on
> endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all?  I don't like that
> "solution" either...

Of course they should do salvage and other fieldwork if they want to. If
they have no way of getting the support and rewards for doing it *right*,
then the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

What happens to a university whose chemistry department awards tenure only
to young scholars specializing in medieval alchemy?

What happens to a university whose medical school frequently awards tenure
only to young scholars specializing in shamanic rituals?

So, one way to implement the kinds of changes towards better science in
linguistics departments that Dan suggests might be to make sure the
university accreditation bodies understand exactly how we think
linguistics departments should be evaluated towards university
accreditation. Unless that happens, we may wind up with alchemists and
shamans running around putting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on
all of our linguistics departments.


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX