The End of Linguistics

[Kerim Friedman]

Let us take one issue raised in the article:

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The author claimed that the failure to define a unified theory was a sign that Linguistics has failed.
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I think it is worth noting that unified theories of everything are impossible in any science. A while ago there was a popular book called "Goedle, Escher, Bach", which discussed Goedle's Theorem. Although I am not trained as a mathematician, I remember the book making a compelling case for the fact that no system of knowledge can be completely closed. There is always the need to refer to something outside a single system of knowledge.

Has physics come to an end because the theory of gravity has not yet been fully integrated with theories that account for the other forces? There are tremendous efforts to create such a "unified theory" but many scientists feel that it is not necessary to unify them. Maybe the phenomenon at hand are simply different enough that it warrants having two different theories. My father (trained in Physics) is thus bothered by the amount of attention given by the press to the mysterious "string theory", which he sees as being based on mathematically trickery and not deriving from observable phenomenon.

Returning to language. It seems that there is a fundamental difference between those who take the single utterance as the unit of analysis and those who take discourse as the unit of analysis. Recent debates on the code-switching list show just how different these two approaches can be when applied to the same phenomenon. Does this negate the two approaches? Does it mean that they are both invalid? Or might they both shed light on different aspects of the same linguistic phenomenon.

Going back to the physics example, we can look at two theories: those of Newton and those of Einstein. Einstein's theory clearly superseded that of Newton, but for building a bridge it is very clear that Einstein's theory would involve a lot of unnecessary calculations that are irrelevant to the project at hand. The simplicity of Newton thus wins out over the greater explanatory power of Einstein. (It is worth noting here that the Ptolemaic (sp?) system had much more accuracy than Galileo's initial model, the main advantage of which was its simplicity.) Similarly, if I was trying to understand certain linguistic phenomenon I might feel quite justified in putting aside my primary interest in political-economics and investigate the issue on structural grounds alone. Does this mean that Bourdieu is invalid and Chomsky is right?

I want to end with a caveat. It has been quite popular amongst post-modern theorists to discuss theory as simply a "tool" and deride all "grand narratives." I am not making such an argument. I do believe that model building is useful, I just think that it is important to understand what limits of theoretical models are. One can use such information to improve the model, or reject it in favor of an alternative model. Science (and I include the social sciences) is, for me, a process - an endeavor to build knowledge. It is never complete, and it is never entirely without internal contradiction. But that does not mean that it is a failed project. In that sense I am a "positivist"  - even when I engage in  deconstruction!

kerim
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P. KERIM FRIEDMAN
			Anthropology, Temple University
			<mailto:kerim.friedman at oxus.net>
			<http://kerim.oxus.net>
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