bolstering credentials

Sat Apr 19 17:47:27 UTC 2003

In response to Galey Modan:
Perhaps your take on "positionings" at SLA meetings reflects a lack of historical understanding of the two disciplines and the role the study of native languages has held within anthropology. I have faith that my colleagues in the SLA are more concerned about the survival of linguistic anthropology and also want to honor the historical role the study of native languages has had in anthropology than they are about "bolstering credentials." I also think it's great that SLA officers such as Sue Gal and Elinor Ochs have made efforts to increase the participation of linguistic anthropologists on various AAA committees, because that is one way to establish and protect our presence in the discipline.

I do not think nor did I mean to imply that there isn't a linguistic PhD "whose area of interest and take on language are incompatible with the project of anthropology."  What I said is that the practice of giving positions specifically marked as linguistic anthropology to people trained outside anthropology departments contributes to the widespread idea among many cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists and archeologists that there isn't, in fact, any difference between the two disciplines. One consequence of this way of thinking is that many departments do not have or have eliminated positions for linguistic anthropology.

>>> Gabriella Modan <modan.1 at osu.edu> 04/19/03 12:05 PM >>>
Just to clarify: My point was not that we should do away with the term
'linguistic anthropologist'.  Rather, I was talking about the specific
dynamics which I see in places like the SLA meetings, where, depending on
the topic at hand,  people do identity work by *either* separating
linguistic anthropology from linguistics, or by identifying *as*
linguists.  While these positionings may seem contradictory, my sense is
that they both are about the same thing, which I think *is* about
bolstering credentials.

As for concern about people w/ linguistics PhDs getting jobs in anthro
departments -- Shockingly, there are people who are trained in linguistics
departments who know a thing or two about anthropology.  I have a hard time
believing that there is a single linguistics PhD with a job in an anthro
department whose areas of interest and take on language are incompatible
with the project of anthropology.  People who get these positions
(obviously) are not generative syntacticians.  I think it's
counter-productive to draw a boundary between linguistic anthropology and
(at least ethnographically-based) sociolinguistics, and deposit people on
either side of the boundary based on what department their PhD comes
from.  It seems to me more useful to, for example, look at the kind of work
that someone is doing.  The interdisciplinarity of linguistic anthropology
is an asset when it comes to research, teaching, and professional
organizing. And materially, it's a more useful strategy to gain more
numbers and support for linguistic anthropology by making the house bigger,
than to build up a wall that excludes people trained in linguistics
departments. AAA and SLA officer positions are often filled by people with
linguistics PhDs anyway -- I think the rhetoric of linguistic anthropology
should reflect that.

Galey Modan

At 08:24 AM 4/19/2003 -0500, Laura Miller wrote:
>Regarding Galey Modan's comments:
>I don't happen to think that linguistic anthropologists label themselves
>such "for the purpose of bolstering credentials."  There are established
>programs in the US that train people in this very subfield. The areas of
>interest and concern to linguistic anthropologists are not often mirrored
>in linguistics departments. An example would be questions about the
>origins of language, which Chomsky and his followers have gone on record
>as claiming are not worth studying.
>
>There is a very good reason why linguistic anthropologists are interested
>in maintaining this distinction. Many anthropology departments are
>eliminating the linguistic anthropology slot with the idea that it is
>merely reduplicating whatever their linguistic department is doing. But as
>we all know, this is not usually the case at all.
>
>There is intense competition over the few bona fide linguistic
>anthropology positions, and some concern among those who are trained in
>linguistic anthropology to see slots given to PhDs in linguistics, thereby
>representing a confounding of the distinction among anthropology
>colleagues while conferring a devaluation of the subfield.
>
> >>> Gabriella Modan <modan.1 at osu.edu> 04/18/03 10:59 AM >>>
>Chomsky's dissertation was on the morpho-phonemics of modern Hebrew, and
>I'm pretty sure he's done work on and/or speaks Yiddish.  Regardless of his
>bi/multilingualism (which it's worth pointing out that we don't even know
>if we're working with similar definitions of bilingualism), it's patently
>ridiculous to claim that Chomsky has nothing of interest to say about
>language.
>
>I'm interested in these discussions about who is a linguist and who is
>not.  I would argue that people who are good at learning languages as
>adults can be seen as linguists  in some sense, because they have to go
>through the same kinds of explicit structural and pragmatic analyses as the
>people who do it for a living in the process of becoming competent
>speakers/signers/writers.  So what makes a linguist a linguist?  Getting
>paid for it?  And what's at stake for us in who we allow into the
>definition?  I've been noticing for the last few years that this issue
>always seems to be brewing beneath the surface of the annual Society for
>Linguistic Anthropology meetings, where people, depending on the year and
>on the issue, want to either separate Linguistic Anthropology from
>Linguistics, which seems to serve the purpose of bolstering credentials as
>anthropologists, or to emphasize Linguistc Anthropologists' identity as
>linguists (this played out last year in the discussion about whether or not
>the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages was gonna meet with AAA
>or LSA); promoting an identity as linguists *also* seems to work to bolster
>our credentials vis-a-vis the rest of anthropology, as people who have
>difficult technical skills which are critical to the work of anthropology
>(something along the lines of, you need us, otherwise anthropology will
>have no rigor, so we're worthy of respect).  This stuff also often seems
>somehow to segue from or into how many linguistic anthropologists are on
>various AAA committees.  In light of this, I would be interested to hear
>other people's thoughts on how our definitions of "linguist" tie into
>material concerns, and what the implications of that are for the work of
>linguistic anthropology (and linguistic anthropologists, broadly construed).
>
>Galey Modan
>
>At 10:16 AM 4/18/2003 -0400, Ronald Kephart wrote:
> >At 6:02 PM -0400 4/17/03, hmfaller at umich.edu wrote:
> >
> >>And thank goodness my invocation of snot caused such a flurry of
> >>activity. I actually was thinking about Jakobson in comparison to Chomsky
> >>(for all his good politics)...
> >
> >But didn't Chomsky grow up speaking both English and Hebrew? As I
> >understand it, his parents were both involved in the movement to
> >revitalize Hebrew, his father was a respected scholar of Hebrew, and
> >Chomsky himself taught Hebrew as a young fellow and wrote his masters
> >thesis on Hebrew. So I think it's a bit unfair to claim Chomsky as
> >"monolingual," whatever else you might think of him.
> >
> >And, while I'm here, I also disagree with whoever stated that all people
> >who have language are linguists. I do agree that people have what I would
> >call folk theories of language, and also culture, and probably even
> >digestion. But I don't think that makes them linguists, or cultural
> >anthropologists, or gastroenterologists.
> >
> >Hiding under my desk now...
> >
> >Ron
> >
> >--
> >Ronald Kephart
> >Associate Professor
> >English & Foreign Languages
> >University of North Florida
> >http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart