ELL: clarification about SIL from an external point of view

[Diego Quesada]

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Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 15:53:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Diego Quesada <dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca>
To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
Subject: Re: ELL: clarification about SIL from an external point of view
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On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Gail M. Coelho wrote:

> It is common for people who work for a particular cause to divide their
> work into supposedly separate organizations for several practical reasons.

  Yes. Just look at the U.S. bipartite political system whose common
  denominator is the ruling invisible elite. Can anyone tell which (party)
  is which, for instance, in terms of foreing policy? If someone thinks
  s/he could, s/he is certainly naive or a charlatan.

  J. Diego Quesada
  University of Toronto

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  Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 13:32:12 -0800 (PST)
  From: Victor Golla <vkgolla at ucdavis.edu>
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  3/17/99

Jeff Allen is correct to note the administrative separation of SIL and
Wycliffe, and the fact that SIL indeed has "external advisory members
who ... have nothing to do with Bible translation, but are rather quite
concerned with providing adequate and quality linguistic training and
research results to the wider linguistics community."  But this does not
make SIL, in the immortal words of Sam Irvin, an eleemosynary institution,
unbiased in its intellectual aims and supported by money with no strings
attached.  SIL is as much a missionary organization in its ultimate goals
as the Wycliffe Bible Translators.

However -- and this is my point here -- SIL makes no attempt to disguise
this fact.  I have many friends in SIL, who are without exception bright
and stimulating people.  But they are also committed evangelical
Christians who make no bones about their beliefs.  We acknowledge that we
hold different views on these matters, and then turn the conversation to
linguistics.  But I have never had any doubt, nor have I ever been led
to think otherwise by SIL members, that evangelization, not "research
results", is their overriding purpose, and I deeply appreciate their
honesty.

                                                           --Victor Golla
													Humboldt
													State
													University

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