There is, most unfortunately, a widespread ignorance and trepidation about linguistics—peculiarly so, since language is unutterably fundamental to our human- hood. Look at this odd comparison Herbert Spencer offered in the nineteenth century (when linguistics was making spectacular advances):
Astonished at the performances of the English plough, the Hindoos paint it, set it up, and worship it; thus turning a tool into an idol. Linguists do the same with language. (1865 [1852):33)
The comparison, in addition to inventing some mythically idiotic Hindoos, has it exactly backwards. Linguists would take out their wrenches and screwdrivers, pull the plow apart, and try to figure out how it works. The ignorant worship and fear. Scientists worship and investigate. But the attitude Spencer displays—something we might call linguiphobia if that term didn’t conjure up a fear of certain sexual practices or pasta cuts—has not abated. Continuing to pick on the British, we can cite one Auberon Waugh, who finds contemporary linguists to be so evil as to play into the hands of Neanderthal conservatives:
Linguistics [has been] reduced by Chomsky and his disciples to a positively mind-boggling level of stupidity and insignificance. If ever [the Prime Minister] wants an excuse to close down a university, she has only to look at its department of linguistics. (1988)
Ignorance is a kind word for Waugh, who is in need of kind words, but his isn’t a unique ignorance.
This book—a “popular science” look at linguistics by way of narrating an influential dispute in the sixties and seventies—attempts to clarify what linguists do, why they do it, and why everyone else should care about what they do.
My hope is that linguists will find this book useful, since many of them have a shaky or partisan view of their own recent history, but my greater hope is that non linguists will find an entertaining and informative account of the science of our most profound and pervasive human attribute, language.
The bibliographical references in the text are quite standard. Citations are given by author, year of publication, and page number—usually in the main text—with the Works Cited accordingly organized primarily by author and year of publication. (A lowercase letter is suffixed to the year of publication, in the text and the Works Cited, when there is more than one bibliographical entry in the same year by the same author.) But there are two wrinkles.
First, there was a great deal of underground literature circulating during the period of interest, only some of which eventually surfaced, so that time-of-composition is often more important than time-of-publication, and I have tried to provide a bit of a road map here by including year-of-composition, in brackets, after year-of-publication. For instance, George Lakoff’s claim that “a generative semantic theory may well be simpler and more economical than an interpretive theory” shows up as “Lakoff (1976a [1963]:50).” Consistency called for me to maintain this style for most other authors as well, leading at times to some awkward looking citations like “James (1981 [1907]),” for his Pragmatism lectures. The only authors for whom I have avoided this style are the ancients—preferring the conventional “Aristotle (Rhetoric 1358b)” to the ugly and overly specific “Aristotle (1954 [c355 B.C.]:32).”
Second, the research for this book blurred at times into an oral-history project, generating hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, hundreds of pages more of letters and e-mail printouts, and almost as many pages of telephone bills. When quoting from this material—which I do quite extensively in the later chapters there is no citation at all. An embedded quotation, then, like “In Ross’s terms, Lakoff ‘is fearless, absolutely fearless’,” without further attribution, is by default a remark made directly to me by Ross.
I would like, very gratefully, to acknowledge the contributions and assistance of a great many people to this book.
First, I thank the many scholars who responded to my letters, e-mail, phone calls, and hallway ambushes with (mostly) good will, candor, and generosity: Dwight Bolinger, Guy Carden, Wallace Chafe, Bruce Derwing, Matthew Dryer, Joseph Emonds, Charles Fillmore, Susan Fischer, Bruce Fraser, Gerald Gazdar, Allan Gleason, John Goldsmith, Joseph Greenberg, Geoffrey Huck, Robert Kirsner, E. F. Konrad Koerner, Yuki Kuroda, Robin Lakoff, Judith Levi, George Miller, Stephen Murray, Greg Myers, Margaret Nizhnikov, Gary Prideaux, Geoffrey Pullum, Wallace Reid, Sally Rice, Sarah Grey Thomason, Don Walker, and Anna Wierzbicka.
Second, and with even more gratitude, I thank the scholars who set aside valuable time to speak with me at length, also with (mostly) good will, candor, and generosity: Thomas Bever, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Morris Halle, Ray Jackendoff, Jerrold Katz, Jay Keyser, Susumu Kuno, George Lakoff, Howard Lasnik, Robert Lees, James Mccawley, Frederick Newmeyer, Paul Postal, Haj Ross, Jerrold Sadock, and Arnold Zwicky.
Bolinger, Chafe, Chomsky, Gleason, Jackendoff, Lakoff, Lasnik, Mccawley, Murray, Myers, Newmeyer, Postal, Prideaux, and Ross deserve still more gratitude, for reading and commenting on various earlier bits and pieces of this book, as do Victoria Bergval, Allen Fitchen, Michael Halloran, Lou Hammer, Pete Matthews, Leo Mos, Terry Nearey, Cynthia Read, Nicolette Saina, and Jim Zappen. Cynthia, my editor, gets another large measure of gratitude for cheerfulness beyond the call of duty. Many thanks also to Susan Hannan, Kim Honeyford, Sylvia Moon, Jean Mulder, and Philip Reynolds.
Not all of these people agree with what this book says, of course, or how it says what it says, and most will happily insist that any flaws are mine alone, but two people disagree so violently with the substance of this book as to require special notice, Chomsky and Lakoff. Both had very extensive comments on the same previous incarnation of the book, comments which I found mostly very profitable, and for which I remain extremely grateful, but both had very strong negative responses to the overall arrangement and orientation. Their responses were essentially inverse, Lakoff finding me to have sided with the interpretive semanticists, Chomsky finding me to have told the generative semantics version, both feeling that I slighted or ignored their own impressions or interpretations of the dispute. I should stress that the version they saw is very different in many ways from the one in your hands, but I have reason to believe that neither of them will be much more pleased with this version (their displeasure, in fact, may very well increase, since some of the latent elements that they found objectionable in the earlier version are stated a little more directly here; my correspondence with them sharpened my judgments on several matters, sometimes in directions neither of them would have preferred). Indeed, Chomsky even objects strenuously to my characterization of him in this preface; he sees no “symmetry” between his and Lakoff’s opposition to the book. I am naturally distressed by their negative reactions, but it would have unquestionably been impossible to satisfy both; perhaps by satisfying neither, I am closer to neutrality than either of them believe.
I also thank the interlibrary loan people at the University of Alberta, and especially, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for above-and-beyond-the-call assistance; Madam X, for diverting to higher education a little time, money, and photocopying resources that the State of New York had not allocated to higher education; the many people at Bell-Northern Research who supported my work, especially Bill Hosier, John Phillips, and Andy Sutcliffe; the Heritage Trust Fund, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and, particularly, the estate of Dorothy and Izaak Walton Killam, for financial assistance; the editors and publishers of Historiographia Linguistica, Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College English, Word, and Rhetoric and Ideology (Kneupper, 1989) for permission to reprint the portions of this book that have appeared elsewhere; and the staff and students of the department of linguistics, at the University of Alberta, for stimulating discussions of my work and theirs.
Lastly, and therefore most importantly, I thank my wife and guiding light, Indira Naidoo-Harris.
Waterloo, Ontario
R.A.H.