Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Richard Hudson]

Dear Fritz,
I agree entirely with Olga. The discussion has a very anglo-phone bias 
away from education - the UK, USA etc all have a tradition in which 
school teachers aren't expected to have learned anything about language 
at university, so academic research on language isn't relevant to 
education. We're very different from many parts of Europe, where grammar 
teaching is an important part of the school curriculum and trainee 
teachers update their understanding at university. I'm sure in a country 
like that, linguistics would be justified in part by its contribution to 
education. I don't know of any bibliographical source for this - if 
anyone does, I'd love to see it. I've written quite a bit about the 
value of linguistics for education (see 
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/papers.htm) but haven't been able to do 
much on that line except pick up odds and ends from gossip. (I do have 
evidence that school kids know a great deal more grammar in countries 
such as Spain - see 
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/ec/ba-kal/ba-kal.htm.)

Dick (Hudson)

Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm

On 20/10/2010 18:43, Yokoyama, Olga wrote:
> 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
>
>
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> Olga T. Yokoyama
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> 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?
>
>
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> 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.
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>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> --fritz
>
>
>
> fjn at u.washington.edu
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>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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]
>
>