Last updated 3 December 1998
Comments Welcome
George W. Grace
University of Hawaii
What I'm going to attempt here is to select quotations from the set that I've been drawing on for my web page and office door, and group them in such a way as to show how a number can be seen as focusing on a common theme.
Before proceeding further, let me cite the following statement (posted on my home page on 16 February 1998) in clarification of this reference to quotations on my web page and office door:
"For some years I have been noting down quotations from various authors on matters related to linguistics. At frequent intervals in the last couple of months I've been posting concise excerpts from this collection on the door of my office. Now, Byron Bender has pointed out that this getting-to-be-filled door is becoming hard to read without considerable patience and some contortion. He suggested that it would be easier to read these quotations if I added them to my website. I'm herewith following his advice."
My reason for attempting to group and annotate the quotations is the feeling that the planless order in which I've been posting them might make them seem--particularly to students--to be nothing more than a random collection of observations that has no focus beyond some relation--and often a seemingly pretty tangential one, at that--to language.
I suppose the best overall answer as to why I've chosen the particular quotations that I've been posting is that they all raise questions that seem to me to be worth thinking about. While there's certainly no single point that all of the quotations are intended to make, all--or almost all--of them might be seen as supporting one or more of a small number of points. What are these points? As I'll explain in a minute, there's no single right way to identify and list them. What kind of points, then? I'll try to explain.
As I've tried to make clear in a number of things I've written, I'm concerned about the fact (I'm convinced it's a fact) that present-day linguistics rests on a number of assumptions that are fundamentally wrong. However, even speaking of "a number of assumptions" is misleading in that it suggests that these assumptions can be readily enumerated. Maybe a better metaphor would be something continuous, like a picture. Or maybe, like a worldview with, in the case of linguistics, particular prominence to the view of those parts of the world that relate to language. The following quotation might help to make the point clearer:
"Effective research scarcely begins before a scientific community thinks it has acquired firm answers to questions like the following: What are the fundamental entities of which the universe is composed? How do these interact with each other and with the senses? What questions may legitimately be asked about such entities and what techniques employed in seeking solutions? At least in the mature sciences, answers (or full substitutes for answers) to questions like these are firmly embedded in the educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice." [Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions, second edition, enlarged. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Volumes I and II: Foundations of the Unity of Science, Volume II, Number 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (pp. 4-5)]
The point I'm trying to get across here is that what I speak of as "fundamentally-wrong assumptions" are part of a more continuous picture of how things are, and that there's no single right way of analyzing this picture into individual assumptions. Moreover, even if there were a single right analysis, we couldn't expect to find it now because we don't yet have the whole picture--the whole system of assumptions--available to analyze. Much of it (as of the system of underlying assumptions of any other field) remains hidden far below the level of conscious awareness.
Furthermore, there are even motives for the individual linguist not to inquire too deeply into these underlying assumptions. False assumptions are probably necessary for scientific research. Kuhn, in the following quotation, points out that "counterinstances" (read: evidence of the incorrectness of assumptions) in science don't simply lead to correcting the assumptions:
"... rejection of science in favor of another occupation is, I think, the only sort of paradigm rejection to which counterinstances by themselves can lead. Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects not on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably he will be seen by his colleagues as "the carpenter who blames his tools.""[ibid. (p. 79)]
The point is that it may be understandable for some linguists in their roles as "ordinary working linguists" to prefer not to inquire about underlying assumptions. However, I think there's good reason why every scholarly discipline including linguistics needs to support a continuing effort to identify and evaluate the assumptions that inform its research and its discourse. Although it may be true that it's necessary to make some false assumptions in order to focus research efforts, that doesn't mean that we benefit from deliberately remaining ignorant of their falsity. In other words, I acknowledge the value of false assumptions, provided they're judiciously employed, but not of false beliefs. However much short term progress may depend on the acceptance of this set of assumptions, progress over the long term will depend just as much on improved assumptions.
Anyway, what I'm going to try to do here is formulate a few assumptions that I attribute to the paradigm (or "pre-paradigm" or whatever it should be called) of contemporary linguistics, and then try to show how some of the quotations on my list may be seen as questioning their validity.
My first attempt concerns the assumption that language consists
of languages. (Click here)
My second attempt concerns the assumption that languages like
English are "natural". (Click here)
George Grace's home page
the Ethnolinguistic Notes
page
the Ethnolinguistic Notes Series 3
page
Ethnolinguistic Notes Series 4 page.
First put on the Web on 17 November 1998
Last updated 3 December 1998