The End of Linguistics

[John McCreery]

At 0:45 AM -0800 3/27/2001, Lev Michael wrote:
>>>>


If we look at academia diachronically, we see a process by which
disciplines (and sciences!) split, recombine, and novel disciplines
suddenly emerge.  Establishing a discipline (say, linguistics) as
'distinct' is very important for academic political reasons (e.g.
access to funding, faculty positions, etc), but we shouldn't confuse
disciplinary boundaries for solid ontological  distinctions.  We
might come back in a century and find "linguistics" departments full
of sociolinguists, with "formal linguists"  in cognitive science
departments, or "linguistics" departments may be full of formal
linguists, with socio-linguists and descriptive linguists in
anthropology departments.  Or, as I suspect, "linguistics"  will
remain diverse, a diversity that derives from the complexity and
subtlety of the phenomena with which linguists (and anthropologists
and cognitive scientists), in their great variety, contend.


Yes, oh yes, oh yes!

Bravo!


John McCreery
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