Download English 401 - Humanities

English 401
Ron Strickland
Sept. 8, 1999
Critical Summary of Journals in Linguistics
In a sense, the academic field of linguistics is only about 100 years old--at least that's
when the field began to take on the "scientific" orientation in which its scholarship might
be recognized today. And Anglo-American scholarship in linguistics is of even more
recent provenance. I will discuss some of the key contemporary journals that publish
scholarship in English in the field below (much important linguistics research is
published in other languages). But first, it is necessary to mention the historical
linguistics of the 19th century, which preceded modern linguistics. Unlike modern
linguistics, which is concerned with describing and analyzing language patterns and their
relationships to thought and communication in a setting isolated from historical change,
19th-century historical linguistics was preoccupied with tracing the geneaologies of
modern languages to their pre-historic origins. After Saussure's structuralist intervention-after his argument that language must be looked at in a synchronic rather than a
diachronic view in order to understand how meaning is made--historical linguistics was
generally ruled out of the discipline. Modern linguistics research divides along the lines
described by Finegan--between those anthropological linguists and sociolinguists for
whom "languages are quick studies in the social structures of human communities and the
mainstay of social interaction" and those cognitive linguists and psycholinguists for
whom "Language is primarily a facet of the human mind" (Gibaldi, p. 3).
I will give a brief historical overview of academic journal scholarship in linguistics and
then provide brief abstracts of several prominent journals in the field. Here I am
reviewing only relatively "pure" linguistics journals; that is, I have not considered
journals that focus mainly on applied linguistics or those focusing on linguistic issues in
the teaching of English to speakers of other languages.
Historical Overview
Academic journal publication of scholarship in linguistics dates back to the nineteenth
century, when research in historical linguistics was a prominent feature of some of the
oldest scholarly journals in English studies, such as PMLA, Studies in Philology, and
Philological Quarterly. After Saussure, scholarship in linguistics generally moved in a
new direction. In place of the emphasis upon tracing the geneaologies of languages and
uncovering linguistic evidence from earlier historical periods came an emphasis upon the
ways languages operate to produce meaning. Linguists developed an interest in the
actual physical processes of the production of language (phonetics, etc.) and in the
relationships between language and thought (cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics,
syntax, structure, grammar, etc.) and between language and communication
(sociolinguistics, syntax and structure again, etc.). These new concerns are reflected in
the mission statements of new professional organizations such as the Linguistics Society
of America , "founded in 1924 for the advancement of the scientific study of language,"
according to the masthead of its journal, Language. That the LSA emphasizes the
"scientific study of language" is significant; the society was at pains to distinguish its
research from that of the earlier generation of linguists, who were now seen as quaint and
amateurish.
Another significant expansion in linguistics scholarship occurred in the late 1950's and
early 1960's, fueled by the revolutionary theories of Noam Chomsky and by the infusion
of massive government support for linguistic research as a side-effect of the cold war.
Journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, published at MIT and recognized as the pre-eminent
organ of Chomskyan theory, and Journal of Linguistics, the journal of the Linguistics
Society of Britain, were founded during this period.
Journals:
Language
Language is the official publication of the Linguistics Society of America. As I
mentioned above, the society was founded on the heels of the Saussurean revolution, "for
the advancement of the scientific study of language," and its editorial profile continues to
follow that lead. The editor's annual report for 1999 asserts that the journal attempts to
publish "the best of what is new in the field" and to represent "the breadth of the field . . .
(in terms of both areas and ideology)." The editor goes on to concede that "the one area
that is clearly underrepresented is abstract deductive formal syntax, but we cannot
publish what we do not receive." I think these observations reveal several things about
the journal. First, that Language conceives its identity as a rigorously scientific journal in
the paradigm of the empirical sciences is suggested by its emphasis on new research,
rather than, say, making itself a forum for critical debates on issues in the field. When
the editor mentions "ideology," then, I think he is using the term loosely and colloquially
to refer to different theoretical orientations within a relatively narrow discursive
disciplinary field. The different areas he mentions would include topics in the traditions
in strictly "scientific" linguistics such as phonology, syntax and semantics. Featured
articles in the June 1999 issue showed a heavy emphasis upon syntax with titles such as
"Explaining Article-Possessor Complementarity: Economic Motivation in Noun Phrase
Syntax," "Processing Complexity and Filler-Gap Dependencies Across Grammars,"
"Revisiting Tungusic Classification from the Bottom Up: A Comparison of Evenki and
Oroqen," and The Grammaticalization of the Proximative in Tok Pisin." The book
review section of the journal includes reviews of books on sociolinguistics and
comparative linguistics, but these topics are not generally found among the journal's
feature articles.
Journal of Linguistics
Journal of Linguistics is the official journal of the Linguistics Association of Great
Britain. It was founded in the mid-1950's and is published by Cambridge University
Press. According to the journal's website (http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/) the journal "is
concerned with all branches of theoretical linguistics, including syntax, morphology,
phonology, phonetics, semantics, pragmatics and historical, sociological, computational,
psychological and applied aspects of language and linguistic theory." However, it seems
to be more concerned with theoretical linguistics than with applied linguistics. Recent
feature articles include essays on phonetics, syntax and semantics: "Towards an
explanation of phonetic differentiation in masculine and feminine personal names," "A
generalized rightward movement analysis of antecedent contained deletion," and
"Syllable asymmetries in comparative Yoruba phonology."
Linguistic Inquiry
Founded in the late 1960's Linguistic Inquiry is published at MIT (Massachusetts Institute
of Technology); it is the major venue for research in the Chomskyan tradition. One
interesting feature of the journal is that it publishes discussions and debates on current
issues in Chomskyan linguistics in addition to conventional research articles. The Spring,
1997 issue, for example includes an essay in which John McCarthy disputes a claim
(made by Stuart Davis in an earlier issue of the journal) that "optimality theory" in
phonology cannot, by itself, account for the range of possible patterns of phonemes in a
particular grammar. McCarthy uses Davis's own research data base material from
Palestinian Arabic to demonstrate that Davis is wrong. For both these scholars, as for
those represented in this journal in general, the goal is to define universal characteristics
of language that would hold for all languages; the fact that they are using a Palestinian
Arabic database is incidental. Sample essays and abstracts from Linguistic Inquiry can be
found on the web at http://mitpress.mit.edu/LI.
Studia Linguistica:
Studia Linguistica is subtitled "A Journal in General Linguistics." The journal dates from
the late 1940's. It produced out of the University of Lund, Sweden and published by
Blackwell publishers in Oxford, UK. . It is not affiliated with a professional organization.
Studia Linguistica publishes articles mostly in English and occasionally in French, with a
mixture of theoretical and disciplinary orientations. According to its web site the journal
aims to provide "an international forum for the discussion of theoretical linguistic
research, primarily within the fields of grammar, cognitive semantics and language
typology." Contents and abstracts are available on-line, as are on-line subscriptions for
the entire journal, at http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/asp/journal.asp?ref=00393193&src=arc&vid=50&iid=1.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
IJSL is published by Mouton de Gruyter, and edited in Israel. As its title suggests, it
focuses on sociolinguistic research. One distinctive feature of this journal is that it
usually publishes special topics issues in which several feature articles all focus on the
same topic. According to the editors,
The policy of one topic per issue means that all of the articles to appear in a given
issue are commissioned, or come as a result of a relatively long lead time "callfor-papers" on a particular subject. Each issue is entrusted to an Issue Editor
whose plans for the issue (contents, participants, etc.) are subject to the approval
of the General Editor and his staff. (IJSL 137, Title Page)
This format produces some very interesting reading. Notice how it grows out of a rather
different set of assumptions about the nature of research from those, say, of Language
(described above). Whereas Language assumes it is publishing empirical research-passively recording the research of discovery--IJSL presumably sees itself as shaping the
agenda of research, playing an active role in defining what is important to talk about by
commissioning essays on particular topics. These contrasting sets of assumptions are
each characteristic of the contrasting paradigms of research in theoretical linguistics and
sociolinguistics. Recent special issues of IJSL have focused on "Language and Politics,"
with several essays on Middle Eastern and North African language issues and "American
English in Europe," with essays on the affects of American language and culture resulting
from media saturation, tourism, and the resistance to acculturation of American
expatriates.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
This is a new journal, only seven or eight years old, published by the American
Anthropological Association, which, according to its website, "was founded in 1983 to
advance the study of language in its social and cultural context and to encourage
communication of the results of such study." Contents and abstracts of essays in recent
issues can be found on the web at http://www.ameranthassn.org/slapubs.htm.
Anthopological Linguistics
Founded in 1959, Anthropological Linguistics is a quarterly journal published by the
department of Anthropology and the American Indian Research Institute at Indiana
University. The journal features research on
. . . cultural, historical, and philological aspects of linguistic study, including
analyses of texts and discourse; studies of semantic systems and cultural
classifications; onomastic studies; ethnohistorical papers that draw significantly
on linguistic data; studies of linguistic prehistory and genetic classification, both
methodological and substantive; discussions and interpretations of archival
material; edited historical documents; and contributions to the history of the field.
(http://www.indiana.edu/~anthling/geninfo.html)
Though it publishes articles on any language, the journal focuses especially on languages
of the Americas. An index with abstract of recent articles (going back to 1989) can be
found on the web at http://www.indiana.edu/~anthling/al_index.html.
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique:
The Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique is the official
publication of the Canadian Society of Linguistics. It publishes articles in English and
French, with a mixture of theoretical and disciplinary orientations. CJL/Rcl publishes
long book reviews, and lots of them. In the Summer, 1998 issue, for example, there is
only one feature article--a 56-page piece entitled "Events, Times, and Mohawk Verbal
Inflection" by Mark Baker and Lisa Demena Travis--and fourteen book reviews, most of
them running to four or five pages.
Language and Communication
"The primary aim" of Language and Communication, according to its title page, "is to fill
the need for a publicational forum devoted to the discussion of topics and issues in
communication which are of interdisciplinary significance." "By focusing attention on
the many ways in which language is intergrated with other forms of communicational
activity and interactional behaviour," the statement continues, "it is intended to explore
ways of developing a science of communication which is not restricted by existing
disciplinary boundaries." In order to achieve this transdisciplinary goal the journal
invites articles from scholars working in a wide variety of fields: anthropology, the arts,
artificial intelligence, education, ethology, linguistics, philosophy, physiology,
psychology and the social sicences. The contents for the July 1999 issue give a sense of
the character of the journal; there one finds an essay on the relationship between style and
thought in Wittgenstein's writing; an essay on the "punctuated equilibrium model of
language development"; an essay on female gender and subjectivity; and an essay on
Chomsky and the evolution of language. As may be inferred from these titles, the journal
tends to publish essays that take a rather "big picture" perspective, discussing issues of
broad, paradigmatic historical and philosophical interest rather than narrowly-defined
scientific research.