[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
Jeremy Bradley
jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at
Fri Jun 26 13:25:42 UTC 2020
Dear all,
Another aspect to consider from the perspective of a smaller discipline
(Uralic studies in my case) is that it is essential to uphold a certain
continuity with existing scholarship, which up to very recently did not
use English as a meta language at all. The more dominant English becomes
as a meta-language in the discipline, the more the impression is created
that you "don't really need" the other traditional meta-languages
(German, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian), and the more you have young
scholars separated from essential resources in the discipline operating
on a comparatively shallow view of the languages. This is especially
dramatic as numerous Uralic varieties went extinct long before English
rose to prominence, and you simply cannot access them at all without
English.
The arguments for publishing in English are obvious, but there is
definite pragmatic value for the discipline in maintaining a more
diverse set of meta-language. In addition to the ideological dimension:
that it's hard to communicate respect for (and more importantly,
acknowledge utility of) the languages of smaller speaker communities if
we reduce ourselves to using only what we perceive as the most "useful"
language at this particular point in time.
Jeremy
On 26/06/2020 14:24, Peter Austin wrote:
> Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD
> dissertations written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami,
> among others. The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be
> able to publish (in books and journals) scholarship in these and other
> languages, it appears.
>
> Peter
>
>
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, <joo at shh.mpg.de <mailto:joo at shh.mpg.de>>
> wrote:
>
> There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular
> languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an
> author should have the full choice to write in whatever language
> they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so
> be it, it is their thesis and their choice.
>
> Regards,
> Ian
> On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis
> <alexberd at gmail.com <mailto:alexberd at gmail.com>>, wrote:
>>
>> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in
>> linguistics and related fields published annually in
>> languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which
>> never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers
>> because of attitudes like having language hierarchies
>> composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh.
>>
>>
>> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few
>> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where
>> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of
>> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement,
>> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of
>> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live
>> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work
>> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of
>> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of
>> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case.
>>
>> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of
>> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where
>> not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's
>> very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that
>> something like that is actually the best practically possible
>> solution.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant
>> <ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de
>> <mailto:ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>>
>> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive
>> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and
>> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic
>> written in a language other than English that is, of
>> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for
>> revision.
>>
>>
>> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers
>> in languages other than English. I personally have strong
>> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated
>> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand
>> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual
>> understanding even larger by publishing in languages
>> other than English (unless there is absolutely no
>> escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself
>> should also be different from the native English in that
>> one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent
>> idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc.
>>
>>
>> If you publish in languages other than English then you
>> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are
>> considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?,
>> Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is
>> difficult to resolve in a fair way.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Ilja
>>
>>
>> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent:
>>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a
>>> special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological
>>> Society' on suppletion last year -
>>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3
>>> - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one
>>> of the articles to be published in French.
>>> <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3>
>>>
>>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the
>>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online
>>> Library
>>> <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3>
>>> If the address matches an existing account you will
>>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username
>>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>> Linguistics & English Language
>>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk>
>>> <mailto:hartmut at ruc.dk>
>>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM
>>> *To:* Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>
>>> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; Wiemer, Bjoern
>>> <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de> <mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>;
>>> Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com>
>>> <mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>
>>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>>>
>>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit
>>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque
>>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel).
>>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is
>>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than
>>> just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant
>>> literature, but how many do?
>>>
>>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift,
>>> “More people can make out what it is about in French
>>> than actually read it”.)
>>>
>>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica
>>> Hafniensia/ was founded in 1939 and its first issue
>>> contained papers in German, French and English. Today,
>>> it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but
>>> now practically all papers are in English, with very few
>>> exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1),
>>> May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing
>>> with English, there are references to literature in
>>> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So
>>> linguists are at least not passively monolingual.
>>>
>>> Hartmut Haberland
>>>
>>> *Fra:* Lingtyp
>>> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *På
>>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent
>>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04
>>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>
>>> <mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>; Gilles Authier
>>> <gilles.authier at gmail.com> <mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>
>>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>>>
>>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les
>>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en
>>> allemand ou en danois … ?
>>>
>>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>> Linguistics & English Language
>>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>>>
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de
>>> <mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>>
>>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM
>>> *To:* Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>>; Nigel Vincent
>>> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk
>>> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>>
>>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
>>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>>>
>>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles
>>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g.,
>>> Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)…
>>>
>>> BW
>>>
>>> *Von:* Lingtyp
>>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im
>>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier
>>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35
>>> *An:* Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk
>>> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>>
>>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>>>
>>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les
>>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une
>>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui.
>>>
>>> GA
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent
>>> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk
>>> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>>
>>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes
>>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher
>>> should be able to read in order to access relevant
>>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be
>>> rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing
>>> in English on a general linguistic topic has not
>>> cited relevant work written in a language other than
>>> English?
>>>
>>> Nigel
>>>
>>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>> Linguistics & English Language
>>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>>>
>>> The University of Manchester
>>>
>>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc
>> Project "Grammatical Universals"
>> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199)
>> Nikolaistraße 6-10
>> 04109 Leipzig
>>
>> URL:http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/
>>
>> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713
>> Room 5.22
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Prof Peter K. Austin
>> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
>> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
>> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
>> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society
>>
>> Department of Linguistics, SOAS
>> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
>> London WC1H 0XG
>> United Kingdom
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>
>
> --
> Prof Peter K. Austin
> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society
>
> Department of Linguistics, SOAS
> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
> London WC1H 0XG
> United Kingdom
>
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> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
--
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna
http://www.mari-language.com
jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at
Office address:
Institut EVSL
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Universität Wien
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1090 Wien
AUSTRIA
Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788
Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley
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