The End of Linguistics

[bryllars at concentric.net]

Dear Ron,

But why would you tell them such things.

If Linguistics should happen to be a "science" it certainly isn't that kind
of a science.
I am a creolist who cares, but I know that language comes enmeshed is a
world of
users and institutions that give variable valuation to all kinds of speech.
And many creole speakers come with a fair load of language self-hatred.
Science can not MAKE the variations EQUAL ( or not ).

   I suppose some kind of empirical checks can REJECT nonsense theories
such as the theories of language kids come to class with.
And that's good. But science cannot provide the authority for your or my view
of language varieties. That involves a moral view of the world.
Racists will not accept the value of African American varieties no matter
how much
"science" is invoked..  Particularly .when there are so many views of what
science
is and can do out there. Try Stephen Toulmin's Foresight and Understanding
for
instance - or any of his and June Goodfield's  wonderful history of science
books
(The Discovery of Time, The Architecture of Matter etc)  where one of his main
points is that "sciences" are different - what constitutes valuable science in
biology is another animal from what constitutes science in physics. Not to
mention
linguistics where fashion and politics have been the order of the day for
80 years or
more.  Germanic cultural assertion followed by American Indian cultural
claims in
the hands of Jews who sought cultural democracy, etc etc.
     And there is ebonics and ebonics. -- the real claims are so very complex
NOT just simply a language of a people.  And I am a major champion of
importance
of African derived expression to the culture and psyche of those who live it.

    By trying to use Science as authority you are forced to simplify the
conception of
science itself - which is to teach something almost as much of a delusion
as the
ideas of African American speech that kids come to class with.

   Karl Reisman

Now that I've written this to you personally I may forward it to the list
anyway as it seems
relevant to the more dogmatic parts of the discussion either way.



At 12:50 PM 3/28/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Kerim Friedman writes:
>
>>...I personally don't really care if what I am doing counts as
>>science or not. We certainly don't get paid what scientists get paid!
>
>Ain't it the truth!  But on the other hand, I do care. I always tell
>my intro students, right from the start, that what we are doing is
>the *scientific* study of language. I then go on to explain that what
>I mean by "scientific" is that the conclusions that we arrive at,
>about English (or any other language) in particular, or about human
>language in general, will be supported by empirically acquired
>evidence. We will not accept as true, for example, the myth of the
>Tower of Babel, because there is no empirical evidence supporting it.
>Nor will we accept the prescriptivists' argument against multiple
>negation (or rather, negative concord, as I prefer to call it) on the
>grounds of logic, because the empirical evidence falsifies it.
>
>Why is this important?  Because, ultimately, the part of the course
>that I consider the most important for most of my students is the
>unit on variation; this is where we talk about English dialects,
>including Ebonics. Many of the students in my classes are or soon
>will be teachers. I want to be able to show them, scientifically,
>that there is nothing about Ebonics (and other devalued varieties
>they might encounter) that makes them *linguistically* unusual. They
>have all the features of human language (UG, or however you want to
>tally it) in the same "amounts" as do Japanese, or Yanomama, or any
>other variety of language.
>
>I want students to leave my class understanding that if they are
>going to be prejudiced against Ebonics, or Appalachian English, or
>whatever, they can take no comfort in the existence of any
>*linguistic* support for their prejudice. Nor can they accuse me of
>simply being "PC," because I have the facts on my side, facts which
>they can discover for themselves if they choose to do so.
>
>Ronald Kephart
>Assistant Professor and Coordinator
>Program in Foreign Languages
>University of North Florida
>
>