Ellen Hendrix

EN 721

Summer 2001

Newmeyer, Frederick J. The Politics of Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

According to Newmeyer, "The Politics of Linguistics surveys two centuries of debate over [autonomous linguistics]," the belief that linguists can study a language "without considering the culture, society, or beliefs of its speakers." Included in his discussion are Marx’s and Engels’ views on language, Hitler’s and Stalin’s attack of structural linguistics, and Noam Chomsky’s theoretical and political views. For anyone interested in the political impact of linguistics, this is a very readable book, one I would highly recommend to get an overview.

Chapter 1 The Study of Language

· Describes the humanist, sociological, and natural approaches to lanugage study

· Explains how autonomous linguistics has been successful yet controversial because it disregards the humanistic and sociological orientations to language

Chapter 2 The Rise of Autonomous Linguistics

· Chronicles the development of modern linguistics, beginning with the comparitivists in 1786 and concluding with Saussure’s Cours de Linguistique Gẻnẻrale in 1916

Chapter 3 Structural Linguistics

· Outlines Saussure’s Synchronic Linguistics’ rise in popularity

· Explains structural linguistics as any approach to language devoted to explicating the internal workings of the language system

· Explains why structural linguistics was flourishing in Western culture by the 1930s

· Highlights the political effect of WWII on structural linguistics, and the success of American structural linguistics in the 1940s and 50s

Chapter 4 The Chomskyan Revolution

· Explains the impact of Chomsky’s 1957 Syntactic Structures on the linguistic community

· Chronicles Chomsky’s (and his followers’) search for a universal grammar and Chomsky’s long-standing impact on linguistic theory

 

Chapter 5 The Opposition of Autonomous Linguistics

· Explains that the heart of Chomskyan criticism is within the realm of autonomous grammar and that autonomous linguistics is founded on humanistic principles

· Clarifies sociolinguistics’ rejection of any premise where any aspect of a language is analyzed independent of the society in which it is practiced

· Introduces Marx & Engels who define linguistics as a superstructural phenomenon, one that is influenced by—and in turn influences—the economic base of society

· Introduces the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf who "lent important support to the idea of an intimate linkage between language structure and ‘external’ phenomena" and established the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, "that linguistic structure is a determinant of world view"

· Details Stalin’s impact on Soviet linguistics, and establishes linguistics as a political tool

Chapter 6 Some Thoughts on the Autonomy Controversy

· Speculates why autonomous linguistics is particularly controversial

· Proposes the Marxist idea that grammar does not lie outside of the superstructure

· Concludes by examining whether or not the conflicts in linguistics are resolvable