Replies

On his website at http://www.amritas.com , Marc Miyake posted a follow-up about this:

"I want to make a couple of points clear to my first-time visitors:

"1. I am not a crank amateur. I have a PhD in linguistics and have taught linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and the University of Oregon. I am currently a visiting assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, where I teach introductory linguistics, morphology and syntax, and semantics. In the past I have also taught phonology, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and several specialized courses on the history and structure of East and Southeast Asian languages. I have presented at international linguistics conferences since 1995 and have been invited to be a member of a elite panel of Japanese language historians which will meet in Copenhagen this August. I have a book on the history of Japanese coming out from Routledge late this summer.

"2. I am not attacking Chomsky merely because of his politics, which have been attacked to death. I wrote the article mainly to dissuade non-Leftists from saying things like "His politics are wrong, but he is a brilliant linguist" (often presumably without ever having examined his theories for themselves). I am really sick of that caveat which I see from time to time in conservative and libertarian critiques of Chomsky.

"A Right-winger or libertarian espousing the same linguistic views would be equally wrong. If Noamuhammad became a Dubya cultist overnight, that still wouldn't change my stance on his theories. Moreover, many of the best arguments I have ever heard against Chomsky come from Leftist friends and colleagues who agree to varying degrees with Chomsky's politics. Although Eugene, Oregon (whose campus David Horowitz called a "disgrace") is hardly Rush Limbaugh-land, none of the linguists I knew there were Chomskyans. Besides, I loathed Chomskyan linguistics long before I ever heard of his political views (which added to my dislike of the man but were not the source of it). And I don't even think he's the worst Leftist alive. He hasn't killed anyone. He is not Stalin or even Pol Pot. Most importantly, rejecting scientific theories because of their advocates' political opinions is wrong. To cite a non-linguistic example, whether punctuated equilibrium is right or wrong has nothing to do with whether Stephen Jay Gould's Marxism was right or wrong.

"However, I should note that some think that Chomsky's politics and linguistics are really two sides of the same coin. I can't read Chomsky's mind, so I don't claim to know, but I did find Cinderella Bloggerfeller's theory intriguing:

" 'From what I've read, I think Chomsky's basic problem is the same whether it's his linguistics or his politics. He creates an a priori theory then he tries to makes the facts fit it

" 'Chomsky's politics and linguistics are similar too in that they are both extremely Anglocentric or "Americanocentric". From what I've read on your blog, Marc, Chomsky's language theory is almost exclusively based on English and ignores languages that are totally different. His political theories boil down to the statement: "The USA is responsible for all the evil in the world today." I can see the appeal of this "one solution fits all" approach. It certainly cuts down on the need for research. Now we need never investigate all those difficult foreign grammars and the complicated histories and politics of other nations. This might be an attractive attitude to those in search of a guru, but it doesn't impress me.'

"Or me. I would add that language is culture is history is politics. (Hence the political-historical-cultural-linguistic slant of this blog.) Chomskyans have not only relegated language into a mystical pseudoscience of invisible 'underlying' forms, but have also robbed language of its context. What is language without its past, without the society that used it, cultivated it, or in some cases, abandoned it? Give me the wealth of Sanskrit philology any day over sterile speculations about phantom pronouns.

"I agree with Cinderella Bloggerfeller's point about the Anglocentric appeal of Chomskyanism. Many Leftists are monoculturalists in multiculti clothing who think they appreciate other cultures but in fact impose their ignorant fantasies onto others (hence the myth of a pure Third World of noble savages contaminated by AmeriKKKa, etc.). Chomskyan linguistics is a junk science version of this, imposing English-like characteristics onto other languages in the name of 'human' language. Many pro-Chomskyans are either native English speakers or people who have mastered English as a second language. Chomskyanism feels 'right' to them since English is native to them and/or a language they value highly. (Anyone who says to me, "It works for English!" will get this answer back from me: "Oh yeah? It doesn't work for ...!") And such people are often wholly unaware of the diversity of human language (which is suppressed in Chomskyan classes that focus on English and, if you're lucky, a handful of European languages with a token non-European language like Japanese - this results in a highly imbalanced picture).

"But even the Chomskyan analysis of English is suspect. How do children learn invisible words and constructions that no one ever pronounces or writes - that never existed until Chomsky and his followers invented them? These invisible entities only 'exist' if you believe they exist.

"An emphasis on belief over empiricism makes Chomskyanism a religion rather than a science. Although I severely doubt this, future hard scientific investigations into the brain may prove Chomsky correct. But until then (= almost certainly never), Chomskyans come off as highly pretentious, thinking they know for a fact what cannot be known for a fact (yet). Their beliefs have become rigid dogmas that few linguistics students can afford to question. The emperor is nude, but if enough people respect him anyway, others who have never seen the emperor for themselves will assume that he is deserving of respect."