Ideology and Linguistic Theory: Noam Chomsky and the Deep Structure Debates

by Geoffrey J. Huck, Geoffrey J. Huck

In Ideology and Linguistic Theory , two students of principals on both sides of the argument - Geoffrey J. Huck and John A. Goldsmith - reappraise the outcome of the Deep Structure Debate.

Genres: Linguistics, Science, Philosophy, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was a bit like listening to a long story from my grandpa, if my grandpa were a successful linguist. My eyes definitely glazed over in parts of the first two chapters, even though it was on the whole quite educational: for one thing, I finally realised that Jim McCloskey and Jim McCawley are two different dudes! I also appreciated the concrete evidence that interpersonally, Chomsky wasn’t great.

Lakoff’s interview at the end, where he assigns OT-style priorities (“commitments”) to various 70s-era linguists to explain why they all thought each other were fools was pretty cool. Really I wish there were more books like this: a little linguistic theory, a little history, a little big-picture science talk, and a lot of (professionally dressed) gossip about an insular community that I’m tangentially part of.

[Deniz Rudin]

Really remarkably insightful and useful in its typologizing of the aims of different stages of syntactic theory—negotiating some mixture of goals that Huck & Goldsmith call "distributional" (explain the distribution of forms), "mediational" (explain how language relates sound to meaning), and, of course, cognitive. Gives both the sense that a lot of progress has been made on important issues, and that that progress is sometimes directly obscured by what people (mistakenly) see as the deepest and most pressing ideological arguments.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

lol did Chomsky shit in these guy's cornflakes?

Functions as an argument against itself. Represents the loosie goosey state of 'facts' for Right Wingers in the sciences when their ideology is bruised.