From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the history of American linguistics

Studies in the History of the Language Sciences #103

by John E. Joseph

What is ‘American’ about American linguistics? Is Jakobson, who spent half his life in America, part of it? What became of Whitney’s genuinely American conception of language as a democracy? And how did developments in 20th-century American linguistics relate to broader cultural trends?This book brings together 15 years of research by John E. Joseph, including his discovery of the meeting between Whitney and Saussure, his ground-breaking work on the origins of the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ and of American sociolinguistics, and his seminal examination of Bloomfield and Chomsky as readers of Saussure.
Among the original findings and arguments contained

• why ‘American structuralism’ does not end with Chomsky, but begins with him;
• how Bloomfield managed to read Saussure as a behaviourist avant la lettre;
• why in the long run Skinner has emerged victorious over Chomsky;
• how Whorf was directly influenced by the mystical writings of Madame Blavatsky;
• how the Whitney–Max Müller debates in the 19th century connect to the intellectual disparity between Chomsky’s linguistic and political writings.

242 pages, Hardcover

First published December 18, 2002

Reviews

[Bookish Hedgehog · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good book if you like reading other people’s correspondence and documents, especially if they’re dead.

The author stuffs the main text with footnote-worthy trivia, and then adds long footnotes with roving commentary, original un-translated passages, and similar pointless details. Chapter 4 is a case in point, as Joseph traces every possible influence on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — only to conclude there is no such, definitive hypothesis.

However, I’m not exactly sure what pissed me off more: Joseph’s careful exegesis of obviously bat-shit crazy statements and ideas, or the reminder of the disappointment (and, frankly, horror) I felt as a undergrad taking a mandatory course in linguistics. It’s embarrassing to see how quickly scholarly argumentation fades into Dan Brown-style claptrap in virtually every ‘classic’ text of general linguistics.