Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Esmat Babaii]

Hi  Fritz,

I want to share what I witnessed in a conference on (theoretical)
Linguistics held at an Iranian university years ago, but I don’t know
if this incidence is relevant to what you are after.  A famous
neurologist, who was and is also doing neurolinguistic research, at
the beginning of his lecture on ‘brain and language’ addresses the
conference manager, a famous linguist, thanking him (a bit ironically)
as follows (in Persian): “Thanks for letting a ‘sack maker’ to the
circle of ‘silk weavers’! Well, I can’t shape language like linguists.
So please excuse me if my speech lacks the expected delicacy and
linguistic sophistication. I speak with facts and figures and I think
they can speak for themselves”. I guess, he wanted to say that talk
and only talk is what linguists do. I should add that this kind of
attitude towards linguists (and other social science scholars) can be
found among most scholars in pure sciences.

Best
Esmat Babaii
Tarbiat Moallem University
Tehran


On 10/20/10, Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> 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]
>
>