re: What good is linguistics?

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Carol Haviland wrote:

> Sara:  Your question points to two related threads:  the contributions
> linguistics makes to composition and the interactions between
> compositionists and linguists in an English department.  The first is
> smoother than the second.  
Yes, Carol, and it's additionally complicated if there are also linguists
in their own department, as there are here at UT.
The institutional part of who does linguistics, who speaks to what
audience and even who counts as a linguist can get hairy.  I suspect there
are
folks in UT's Linguistics Dept. who would not count *me* as a linguist,
although I have degrees in linguistics from two of the oldest and most
prestigious linguistics departments in the country--I just don't happen to
be a theoretical syntactician.  I worry that unless linguistics
departments are more willing to make connections with all of us on campus
who define ourselves as linguists, they're going to be isolated and
without allies in this era of tight budgets.

> For a number of reasons, many of us value our own study of linguistics in
> our comp programs, and we think that our students are the richer for similar
> exposures.  However, our relationships with our linguists-colleagues are
> often problematic.  On our graduate committee, the biggest rubs when we
> review thesis proposals seem to be two:  we look at research differently,
> particularly when we think about quantification, and we think about focus
> differently; compositionists think linguists focus on tiny objects of study
> and then make assumptions or appear to draw conclusions that compositions
> believe are unwarranted or at least ought to be disclosed:  the linguists
> don't questions these assumptions among themselves.

Yes, I've sometimes felt that I'm talking at cross purposes with
colleagues, even when we think we're talking about the "same" things.  I
think one difference is a difference in let's say "textual orientation."
For many people in rhet-comp., and more broadly people with degrees in
English studies the assumed object of study is a written text.  For many
of us from linguistics departments the assumed object of study is speech,
even when that's not where the evidence comes from.  In my own work, for
example, I assume I'm trying to reconstruct something akin to spoken
Hittite, even if I don't happen to have native speakers available.  
You're right too that sometimes the assumptions need to be questioned.  I
do have colleagues, for example, who seem to think that what they are
encounterng in a Hittite text is phonetic transcription, which is a rather
unrealistic view of writing, to put it mildly.  Chomsky et al. can
certainly be criticized for studying products of written language and
using the results to make unexamined claims about innate linguistic
capacity, especially when more thoughtful observers of actual spoken
language find reasons to doubt the sentence is necessarily *the* unit of
speech.

I've encountered the dissertation/masters thesis support from the other s
side,  and I find my colleagues in composition, especially those in
computers and writing, much more willing to
respect my opinion than my colleagues in literature.  I worry, though,
that I get called in as "enforcer"-- the person who has to say, "Well,
that's very interesting, but if you are going to develop a comparison
between computer language and natural languages, you need to know a lot
more about natural languages, and your knowledge of linguistics has to
extend a bit past Bloomfield!"  I do think, however, that there are
genuine possiblities for dialog, but they might be more obvious if the
English department was more supportive of linguistics in its graduate
program.  I don't want to be called on to do "enforcement" or
"remediation" when people could have taken a course with me earlier in
their careers.


> Absent personality conflicts, which a Canadian linguist sitting across from
> me on an airpline assured me are part of the territory "we're just put
> together differently, he claimed," we can get through these thickets and
> both be the richer and our students survive.  But, it takes some serious
> listening to each other because we do come at issues differently. 

I had a sort of epiphany last week reading Lanham on hypertext that I 
think explains in part some of the feeling I get in talking to people
about online discourse that even though we seem to be talking about things
that are slightly different.  He was talking about "oral" aspects of
computer-generated language and equating "oral" with rhetoric.  What I
mean is speech (natural speech, "untrained(?)" speech, conversation),
though I tend to use "speech-like," "interactional" or "conversational" in
preference to "oral." 


> 
> I'm very pleased that ours is a combined department, and 
> I'd be interested in your observations about the ling/comp faculty
> relationships in your department.
> 
I'm in *two* departments, and actually three of my colleagues in the
Divsion of Rhetoric and Composition have degrees in linguistics, either
MA's or Ph.D's in English with concentrations in linguistics.  I've got
colleagues in English who are linguists too, but they're not terribly
articulate or energetic in defending the program, and I'm tired of
fighting alone.


Sorry to have rattled on so long, but you raise some interesting issues.
Sara


> Carol Haviland
> 
> >Susanna I want to thank you and everyone else who's responded to my
> >question for your thoughtful and *encouraging* replies.  I've been
> >trying to figure out whether I want to write a paper about linguistics and
> >composition, and your replies give me reason to believe it's anything but
> >a futile connection--not the message I get from many of my colleagues in
> >the English department.  Your replies also give me reason to believe that
> >the things I do in my grad and undergrad courses do succeed with some
> >people anyway, since the courses you've described as teaching or taking
> >sound a lot like what I do in my own courses.
> >
> >Hmm, maybe I should invite y'all to the next meeting of the English
> >department at which the place of linguistics in our grad or undergrad
> >program comes up--but that's not an experience I'd inflict on anyone I
> >*like* ;-)
> >Sara
> >
> >On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Susanna Horn wrote:
> >
> >> Allow me to add a vote for sociolinguistics.  I went kicking and screaming 
> >> into this course, but now I see it as one of the most practical courses that 
> >> I have taken.  It REALLY helped me understand my students' writing.  
> >> 
> >> Therefore, I would strongly recommend that future teachers take a 
> >> sociolinguistics course.  Understanding the social contexts and reasons for 
> >> linguistic forms and changes can help us talk more intelligently and be lots 
> >> more tolerant.                  
> >> 
> >> Sue Horn
> >> Developmental Programs
> >> The University of Akron
> >> Akron, Ohio
> >> 
> >> shorn@uakron.edu
> >> 
> >
> >
> >
> 
>