Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Richard Hudson]

As a postscript, I can answer your question more directly by saying that 
linguistics has had a great deal of explicitly recognised influence on 
official policy in the education of England (and maybe other bits of the 
UK), which I document in my paper "How linguistics has influenced 
schools in England" 
(http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/papers.htm#influence). The snag is, 
of course, that most teachers don't know enough about language to apply 
the official policy (because, as I said before, linguistics isn't part 
of their university curriculum). But the fact is that 'knowledge about 
language' and 'language awareness', both of which are derived directly 
from (Hallidayan) linguistics, are part of the official curriculum.

Dick

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

On 21/10/2010 09:34, Richard Hudson wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> 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]
>>
>>
>
>
>