Our vocation

If you’re a linguist: well, why?

One thing that stands out about the life of the professional linguist is what Chomsky has the responsibility of intellectuals, to “speak to the truth and to expose lies”, in this case uncomfortable truths about language and its role in society. Certainly this responsibility—and privilege, as Chomsky also points out—is inspiration for many linguists. But other motives abound. I for one am more drawn to learning about (an admittedly narrow corner) of human nature than I am to speaking truth to power, and most likely would have ended in some other area of social science had I not discovered the field. And there’s nothing wrong with a linguist who is most of all drawn to little logic puzzles, so long as these puzzles are ultimately grounded in those questions about human nature. (I do reject, categorically, those who say that linguists ought to be doing nothing than “Word Sudoku” or “Wordle with more steps”. Maybe there are people who work solely in those modes, and if so I wish them a very happy alt-ac career transition.)

I think the truths about human nature uncovered by the epistemology-obsessed generativists—including those of the armchair variety—has something to say about the proper organization of society. But one is more likely to get such messages from sociolinguists. Sociolinguists correctly point out that we have unexamined, corrosive ideologies about language, languages, and their speakers that are mostly contrary to the liberal values most of us profess, and they certainly are well-positioned to speak these truths. That said, I do not agree with an often-implicit assumption that sociolinguistics is somehow a more noble vocation than other topics in the field. The “discourse” on this is often fought as a proxy war over hiring: e.g., one I’ve heard before is “Why doesn’t MIT’s linguistics faculty include a sociolinguist?” First off, it sort of does: it includes one of the world’s foremost creolists, who has written extensively about the role of creole studies in neocolonialism and white supremacy. Whether or not a creolist is a sociolinguist is probably more a matter of self-identity than one of observable fact, but there’s no question that creole studies has a lot to give to—but also a both a lot to answer for on—the problem of linguistic equality. Should the well-rounded linguist have studied sociolinguistics? Absolutely. But there are probably many other areas, topics, or even theories you think that any well-rounded linguist ought to have studied but which are not required or widely taught, and these rarely provoke such discourse.

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