Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Harald Hammarström]

I don't think the Jelinek quote was ever in a publication. In the keynote
speech for his ACL lifetime achievement award in Singapore 2006, Fred
described
the situation (I think it was in the early 1970s) as "that is when I
supposedly said what I supposedly said ..." referring to the infamous quote.
Perhaps there's a video recording of the speech of maybe someone else knows
the story better and can verify that the quote was actually in a
publication?! all the best, H

2010/10/21 Yokoyama, Olga <olga at humnet.ucla.edu>

> Fritz,
>
>
> I take it that your article is about the academic community's attitudes
> towards linguistics. Although not part of your topic but still very
> important for the status of linguistics and the budgetary decisions made
> especially in public institutions are attitudes towards linguistics in the
> lay society. We all have experienced the routine questioning along the lines
> of "Oh, you're a linguist? So how many languages do you know?".
> Misunderstandings out there are vast and we linguists need to address them.
> One way my department did it this summer was by addressing the Arizona
> ruling on teachers with accented English in a public conference, which
> combined international scholars and practitioners in one room (
> http://sites.google.com/site/uclalinguisticdiversconf2010/). U. Oregon's
> Olympiad for secondary school students is another step in the right
> direction. Linguists need to start talking to the public at large and make
> sure that the future generations don’t vote for closing linguistics and
> language departments (cf. the latest SUNY Albany case) based on budget
> considerations combined with glaring ignorance about what language studies
> are.
>
> Olga
>
>
>
> Olga T. Yokoyama
>
> Professor and Chair
>
> Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL
>
> University of California, Los Angeles
>
> Tel. (310) 825-4631
>
> Fax (310) 206-4118
>
> http://www.appling.ucla.edu
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:
> funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Frederick J Newmeyer
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:13 AM
> To: Funknet
> Subject: [FUNKNET] Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> For a survey article that I'm writing, I plan to assemble quotes from
> people outside the field of linguistics on what they see as the value, or
> lack of value, of work done in linguistics. So I would like to cite
> published quotes from psychologists, anthropologists, literary specialists,
> etc. on their views about the value/relevance of linguistics for their
> particular concerns and its value/relevance in general. Can anybody help me
> out by pointing me to relevant quotes?
>
>
>
> Let me give one example of the sort of thing that I am looking for. The
> late computational linguist Fred Jelinek reportedly wrote: 'Whenever I fire a
> linguist our system performance improves'.
>
>
>
> Thanks. I'll summarize.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> --fritz
>
>
>
> fjn at u.washington.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Frederick J. Newmeyer
>
> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>
> Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> University
>
> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
>
>
>