Lit vs Ling: Enough!

[Loren A. BILLINGS]

I'll try to be brief:

I think one glaring omission in the discussion (begun by the plea from
Cornell) is the existence of a growing group of scholars in the field who
do research specifically in pedagogy--"L2-aquisition" in newspeak.  One
doctoral program I know about even has a complete track in this
subdiscipline, in addition to the more traditional ones of literature and
linguistics:  Bryn Mawr College.  Other programs have strong emphases is
this area without even having "linguistics" tracks (to my knowledge); the
University of Wisconsin at Madison comes to mind.

More importantly, I think it extremely important to emphasize that pouring
however many courses of "linguistics" down the gullet of a "literary
critic" (or vice versa) is nothing more than dictatorial.  What is needed
is a course or two in teaching methodologies from an L2-aquisition
professional.  I was very fortunate to have attended such a course, with
Irene THOMPSON (at George Washington University), prior to making the
mistake of dumping linguistics into my students of beginning Russian.
Prior to that course I had all sorts of wrong-headed ideas about teaching
linguistic concepts in the language classroom.

Don't be mistaken:  I was and remain interested in theoretical linguistics.
This is my academic interest.  I just know to use that theory extremely
sparingly in the language classroom.  I think linguists are like fighter
pilots trying to operate an airliner.  Airline pilots are responsible for
many lives, and it's probably not a good idea to try to fly the jetliner
like a "fighter jock" would.  Instead, in most cases it is preferable to
have a seasoned commercial aviator familiar with the lay of the land,
weather patterns, congestion over certain areas, etc.  These are literary
scholars in my analogy.  I think this is what Keith GOERINGER meant when he
said he (a linguist) would prefer a _literaturo(v)ed_ as a teacher of
first-year Russian any day.  To side, very briefly, with Bob BEARD, I would
still very much prefer that the airline pilot have the reflexes of a
fighter pilot.  That is, if something goes wrong, the linguist probably has
a better idea of what needs to be done.

Finally, enough of this we-linguists-are-better-than-literary-critics talk!
It's plain to see than any position in the Slavic field--be it a strictly
Russian-literature position or one specifically in Slovene semiotics--still
hurts everyone's chances of finding gainful employment.

--Loren Billings (billings at rz.uni-leipzig.de)