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The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition

by Randy Allen Harris (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 27 ratings
See all formats and editions
An updated and expanded history of the field of linguistics from the 1950s to the current day

The Linguistics Wars tells the tumultuous history of language and cognition studies from the rise of Noam Chomsky's Transformational Grammar to the current day. Focusing on the rupture that split the field between Chomsky's structuralist vision and George Lakoff's meaning-driven theories, Randy Allen Harris portrays the extraordinary personalities that were central to the dispute and its aftermath, alongside the data, technical developments, and social currents that fueled the unfolding and expanding schism. This new edition, updated to cover the more than twenty-five years since its original publication and to trace the impact of that schism on the shape of linguistics in the twenty-first century, is essential reading for all those interested in the study of language, the making of knowledge, and some of the most brilliant minds of our era.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0199740338
  2. Edition
    2nd
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    September 13, 2021
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    6551 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Linguistics Wars is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the dispute it covers and its aftermath, as long as its limitations are kept in mind." -- Nicholas Allott, Journal of Pragmatics

"The book is generative, indeed." -- Judith Kaplan, Journal of the History of Science Society

"The first edition of this volume recounts the "war" between linguists based at MIT from 1967 to 1977. It pitted Noam Chomsky and supporters of his then-current theory, interpretive semantics, against proponents of generative semantics, with the relation of syntax to meaning in dispute. In 2021, the "war" read very differently....Disputants were overwhelmingly male and students of the same teachers. Papers included insider jokes, and public confrontations turned personal...this second edition presents new material charting the careers of the major figures, regretting the tradition of rhetorical belligerence and celebrating a more open discourse in the emerging subdisciplines. Harris increases prominence of female scholars, particularly Robin Lakoff, and concludes by describing Chomsky's scholarly practice and speculating on his lasting legacy. Tracking the evolution of linguistic theory, this volume supersedes the first." -- J. Adlington, McMaster University, CHOICE

"Harris ... demonstrates a deep knowledge of the issues in the conflict; he also brings a needed sense of perspective to the story. His stunning bibliography runs a monograph-length 65 pages, with over 1600 entries, and he appears to have absorbed it all." -- Andy Rogers, LINGUIST List 33.3261

"Randy Harris has written an extremely engaging account of the rise of generative syntax and of some of the linguists who participated in this development, focusing on the scruffy fights that held a lot of people's attention in the second half of the 1960s, and then tracking the trajectories of the linguists after that very belligerent moment. The book is great fun to read-Randy is a terrific writer, the likes of which we rarely see among academics-and along the way, the reader learns a lot of linguistics." -- John Goldmith, History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences, University of Chicago

"Linguists, whatever your persuasion, please read this book. Seriously, it's hard to understand the current field without knowing this history. It's unbiased (no one is immune), accurate, and most importantly, entertaining." -- Adele Goldberg, Princeton University

"Randy Harris has done the intellectual world a remarkable service." -- Geoffrey Sampson, LingBuzz

"[Harris's] style is direct and informal. He is sharp and clear even on quite technical topics, his grasp of competing theories is sound, and his tales of the rise and fall of GS are well documented. . . . Anyone who wants insight into what has been going on in Chomskyan linguistics this past half century should read the new edition of The Linguistics Wars." -- Geoffrey K. Pullum, National Review

"If you want to know how Chomsky's Minimalism and Lakoff's Cognitive Linguistics developed such different views on how knowledge of language is organized in the human mind, I strongly recommend reading the second edition of The Linguistics Wars. This new edition extends the history to the present in the same well-informed and lively way for which the first edition received so much praise." -- Ad Foolen, Radboud University

Praise for the First Edition

"This is intellectual history crossed with a Shakespearean history play." -- David Berreby, The Sciences

"A fascinating tale of ambition and animus that makes the linguistic analyses (and antics) of a bygone day accessible to non-linguists." -- Stephen O. Murray, Language Sciences

"[The Linguistic Wars] is extraordinarily well written, far more enjoyable and interesting than anything I've ever read in the history of linguistics, approachable by any non-linguist interested in the topics covered -- and utterly fascinating for linguists. ... the standard of scholarship exemplified in this book is simply stunning." -- John Lawler, The LINGUIST List

"[Harris] documents in meticulous detail, with great sensitivity and unswerving impartiality, how Chomsky's early theories captured the imagination of the new generation cognitive scientists and resulted in the overthrow of Bloomfieldian linguistics and behaviourist psychology more generally. He explains the elegance of 'deep structure' and the power of Chomsky's conception of language as expounded in the 'standard theory', and then shows how a disparate group of young scholars, the generative semanticists, effectively hijacked the fledgling theory and developed it in ways so radical that Chomsky soon came to be seen as a reactionary fighting a rearguard action against the forces of progress. . . .I can vouch for the accuracy and fairness of Harris's dissection. . . .Harris has achieved the near impossible: being fair to both sides in a civil war." -- Neil Smith, Nature

"Randy Harris... brilliantly combines human interest with a skilful and often highly technical commentary on analyses favoured by the opposing camps." -- John N. Green, Modern Language Review

"The Linguistics Wars^ Rcontributes to knowledge by way of bringing academic life down from its pedestal, allowing us to see it in human terms, and in the process showing us that it is both less pristine and more exciting than its image in the general culture would lead most people to expect. Doing so makes academic work more accessible and academic behavior more accountable. The great strength of Harris's account is that he combines the linguist's understanding of the technical issues involved in research and theory construction with the historian's appreciation of the role that social and psychological factors play in a scientific community." -- John Laurence Miller, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

"In this evenhanded, trenchant and witty academic chronicle, Harris looks at the fierce, acrimonious controversies that have rocked linguistics since the 1950s. At center stage is Noam Chomsky whose search for the innate structures underlying language revolutionized what had been primarily a descriptive, behavioristic science. Chomsky's followers, notably George Lakoff, James McCawley, Paul Postal and Haj Ross, came to view Chomskyan "deep structure" as a barrier to forging a link between sound and meaning." -- Genevieve Stuttaford, Publishers Weekly

"Harris's book is a strikingly ambitious one, combining historical accuracy, conceptual detail, satirical humour, and theatrical imagery, written in a careful style that alternates between more formal and more casual tones and registers." -- Cameron Morin, Cognitive Linguistics Studies

"This book provides an interesting example of recent history and is an important milestone in Chomsky historiography." -- J. Léon, Histoire Ãpistémologie Langage

About the Author

Randy Allen Harris is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His books include Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Interfaces, Rhetoric and Incommensurability, two volumes in the Routledge Landmark Essays series, both in aspects of Rhetoric of Science; and The Linguistics Wars.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09DQX4V9N
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (September 13, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 13, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 6551 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 563 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 019974033X
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

About the author

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Randy Allen Harris

Randy Allen Harris

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Randy Harris was born in the new hospital in Kitimat, BC, Canada, in 1956. After some time there, and some more time in Campbell River, BC, he spent an inexcusably long time moving around the continent, from university to university, getting an education. He attended the University of Lethbridge, in Southern Alberta, mostly studying philosophy. He transferred to Queen's University, in Southern Ontario, where he earned an Honours B.A. in English Literature. He went to Dalhousie University, in Halifax, where he earned an M.A. in English Literature, specializing in Henry Fielding. Next came the University of Alberta, where he earned an M.Sc. in Experimental Linguistics, specializing in aphasia. To round things off, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY, where he earned an M.Sc. in Technical Communication, specializing in graphics, and a Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric, specializing in scientific argumentation and Chomskyan linguistics. Whew.

Upon escaping university, he worked for several years at Bell-Northern Research, in Ottawa, but somehow ended up back in university: he now teaches linguistics, rhetoric, and communication design in the English department at the University of Waterloo. He also researches and writes about a range of things, most of which sound terribly pompous, but are really an awful lot of fun.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
27 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Chris Brew
4.0 out of 5 stars not just for linguists
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2022
Verified Purchase
Anyone who is serious about the human sciences should read this. The technical issues may fade in the coming decades but what will remain is the story of how Noam Chomsky’s working style and rhetoric shaped the careers and interests of both his supporters and his detractors. Often the detractors and the awed supporters are the same people. This is not a normal academic book: it has too much emphasis on personalities for that. But it is good as an account of what the issues were, and accurate as far as I can tell.
2 people found this helpful
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Bobbibo
2.0 out of 5 stars Legible? Yes... Readable? No.
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2022
This is a remarkably interesting work … or could have been exactly that…
On the positive side, the author clearly has invested a lot of work into this detailed report of the "linguistics wars" and their protagonists. And he certainly knows what he writes about. Five stars for competence and effort.
However, as for readability … Not so many stars at all.
To be clear, I have written (decades ago) about Chomsky's formal language theory, used in my own teachings, delved a bit into transformational grammars and then moved to other (similar) interests, such as algorithm, automata and data structures. So I should be able to enjoy the book. I did not.
My point is this: although the book really brings it all together, it is only truly accessible to cognoscenti. It cites a lot of theoretical contributions (articles, etc.) by giants of the field, but leaves all this as mere terminology without any (or not much at all) explanatory detail, not even an abstract of the most fundamental publications. Terminology without actual content.
To use a comparison, it is as if one was given a detailed chronology of WWII, where the reader owns a broad mind mapping of Europe and some beforehand knowledge of important WW facts, but reads over references to the battles of Schlamm-am-Weser, Kvinnogardhissen, Burlatone-la-mievra, where general Plockendürf illustrated his strategy and il Brigadiere Balordinetto was repeatedly defeated to the advantage of Maréchal Sanseffai, essentially because the report does not provide any reference to the actual happenings at those places, their location, their strategic importance, the strategy of the protagonists, and so forth. That would be just as impressive as the "linguistic wars" but would not reach the aim of adequately informing the reader.
Now, adding the necessary detail would have considerably increased the size of the book, I imagine. So, as an alternate option, the author could have provided that detail on the publisher's (or his own) website. Just an idea…
3 people found this helpful
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Calrendon
1.0 out of 5 stars This is not a linguistics book but a history book
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2022
The author gives a lot of (rather too many) details about who the people are and what they did, but a very poor account of the dispute itself. It's like you are talking about a fight and say a lot about how it progressed and who the fighters are, without giving anything substantial about WHY the fight broke out. If you are seeking a LINGUISTIC understanding of why Chomskey had such powerful influence, what problems the dissenters saw in his theory, and how their views differed, this book will disappoint you. Furthermmore, you may find the non-academic, popularist and disorganized style of the writing uncomfortable.
One person found this helpful
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