[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

[Martin Haspelmath]

It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who 
realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish 
linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings.

I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career 
to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite 
pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in 
Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in 
German about general linguistics).

So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good 
jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly 
get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to 
hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua 
(http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), 
but can this be much more than a symbolic act?

Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps 
talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people 
who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What 
is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian?

Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", 
and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this 
is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's 
impact factor 
(https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even 
though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science?

So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in 
linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De 
Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other 
languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real 
difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.)

Best,
Martin

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig