[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

[Paolo Ramat]

Dear all,

I have followed with great interest the discussion about  ‘Globish’ and languages of scholarship. Having been since 1996 the (now outgoing) editor of the oldest Italian linguistic journal  founded by G.I. Ascoli (1873: “Archivio Glottologico Italiano”, AGI), I was faced many times with the language choice problem. I would like to make some comments. 

I think that  between “defeatists” and “romantics” (Martin’s dichotomy) there is a third way. Linguists should care not only for the international readers’ community but also for the ‘local’ readers who might not be interested in general, theoretical problems, but are strongly concerned for their own language and eager to know more about its history and perhaps also about its future. There exist  journals which are dedicated to specific areas. Take for instance the Dutch journal “Taal en Tongval” : we read on the cover sheet: <<Taal en Tongval [is] an academic journal devoted to the scientific study of language variation in the Netherlands and Flanders, in neighbouring areas and in languages related to Dutch. The journal welcomes contributions in Dutch, English and German. In certain cases we also consider articles in other languages, including Frisian, Afrikaans and French.>>. Similarly, it would make little sense to ask perspective contributors to the  “Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana” to use English (unless an article would deal with general problems concerning what’s a dialect and what does it mean for a dialectologist to write a grammar of a dialect).  Admittedly, this is pure Eurocentrism (as Claire Bowern underlines); but we are the heirs of a long standing tradition which deserves to be kept. Why to re-baptize the glorious Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap  as “Norwegian Journal of Linguistics”? Even keeping the traditional “NTS” name would it be possible to accept English written papers --perhaps the majority of them, if the Authors prefer to write in English or ‘Globish’.

 

Peter Austin is absolutely right when he writes that 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 (see also B.Hurch’s mail). Moreover. I agree with Martin when he writes that along with the traditional Eurocentrism it’s also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance.

 

On the other hand it is true, as Guillaume says, that young linguists are not competitive if they  don’t publish in ‘Globish’. Remember the amusing anecdote told by Nigel who, on the occasion of an international conference on Italian linguistics, was asked to held his plenary lecture in Italian since most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in English! (It’s amusing, but not so fun!...).

 

The solution is to leave the choice to the Author of the article submitted to the journal, as, e.g., Diachronica does. This is the liberal policy we have adopted for AGI. 

But this is not the policy of the big publishing houses. I remember the long discussion we had with the publisher in order to have one volume of the EUROTYP-series published in French: Actance et Valence dans les langues de l’Europe (in a similar vein Nigel tells us of a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society': he and Frans Plank have been able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French !). Whether you like it or not, this is the situation you have to live with.

My conclusion: one has to have ’mixed (and at the same time liberal) feelings’ : 

1.      ’Defeatism’: Globish (i.e. an English variety avoiding dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, using short sentences, etc.: see Ilja Seržant) is the international unavoidable language linguists and other scientists have to use when dealing with general problems which may be relevant for a large international audience. (Obviously, this does not impinge upon the possibility of having valuable English written contributions on Mòcheno, a Bavarian dialect spoken in Trentino -- Fersentalerisch ! Once more: the language choice is a matter of the Author, who shouldn’t be compelled to use Globish) 

2.      On the other hand, just as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese linguists have their own journals dedicated to the many languages spoken in their own areas, we –I mean the European linguists—have to keep alive a tradition of studies using our mother tongues : a ’romantic’ position, in Martin’s terms.

Best,

Paolo

 

 

Università di Pavia (retired)

IUSS Pavia (retired) 

Editor-in-Chief of “Archivio Glottologico Italiano”

Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente

Academia Europaea

Societas Linguistica Europaea, Honorary Member

 

Home address:

Piazzetta Arduino 11

I-27100 PAVIA

##39 0382 27027              ##39 347 044 9844 

 



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