[ANTHRO-L] The End of Linguistics

[John McCreery]

At 3:47 PM -0800 3/31/2001, Ronald Kephart wrote:
> John McCreery writes:
>
> >...Why, when our friend and mentor Mike Salovesh went to Chicago,
> >for example, was training in linguistics considered an essential
> >part of the anthropologist's tool kit, while now, in many
> >departments--or so I am told--it is possible to do a Ph.D. in
> >anthropology with no linguistics at all?
>
> Just a quick comment on this: Our new BA in Anthropology here at
> North Florida has LIN 3010, "Principles of Linguistics," as one of
> the required core courses in the program. We will also have a
> senior-level course of the "language and culture" sort, which I have
> to design. So, linguistics is still out there...


Good for you. For my two cents, the Alessandro Duranti reader where I found
the Hymes article is very good value, indeed, as a compact source of major
articles.

I never, by the way, doubted that linguistics exists. But to have lived
through the linguistic-models rush, when it seemed that--as I still
occasionally tell my students--linguistics seemed like the only serious
competitor to economics as a model for social science and then lived on to
see it recede leaves me wondering how this all happened.


John McCreery
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