[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Sun Jun 28 18:39:59 UTC 2020

Paolo,
This is a wonderful statement of all the complexities of language choice
that arise in the domain of scholarly linguistic publication, complete with
a cogent proposal for how to balance the conflicting values that inevitably
come into play.
Jack

==============================
John W. Du Bois
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
USA
dubois at ucsb.edu

On Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 7:50 AM Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it> wrote:

> 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:
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
>
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