When linguists attack: One professor fights PC domination of academic linguistics

Weekly Standard ^ | 9/12/03 | David Skinner

[catonsville]

It is the "little Hitlers" syndrome. In this case useless academics, pushing people around to inflate their egos. Even if they have to appear stupid in doing so.

[Hobsonphile]

Leftism on Campus ping!

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[visualops]

Such victim-status politics has given scholarship a bad name and detracted from the higher pursuits that are supposed to the mission of higher education. Let's hope Postal's attack spawns many imitators.

We can always dream.

[Congressman Billybob]

I agree with Mr. Postal's comments. Try this on for size: "One small step for men, women, gays, lesbians, transgendered, and animal lovers. One giant leap for womynkind." Sorta rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "Paying the Wrong Piper," discussion thread on FR. Article is also on ChronWatch.

[wizardoz]

Holy Cow. I know Colleen Brice. She was probably still a grad student then. She's a nice woman, but.... I mean, always smiles at you in the hallways, when she disagrees, she does so in the politest, gentlest way she can... always notices if you've gotten a haircut or are wearing a new outfit... but I can't say this surprises me. She was in charge of me the first time I taught a Ling 101 class, and it was evident what her politics were. Of course, they were pretty much the same as everyone else in the department.

Ling departments are notorious for being ridden with women who wear long dresses and flat sandals, dangly earrings but little make-up, and own lots of cats. But every department has its flavor.

Sociology departments have much more butch women, fat, with mullets.

Anthropology departments feature long haired men who have dogs, and don't bathe.

Philosophy departments also require men to have a ponytail, but they don't have as many dogs and don't smell quite so bad.

English departments feature much more middle-class, soft looking lefties.

And of course, in Engineering everyone's Indian and in Computer Science, they're all Asian. You can tell what department you are walking through by the hair and the smell, I'm tellin' ya.

[mrustow]

Finally, Postal makes the rather daring argument that even if it were the case that women readers were harmed by female under-representation in example sentences, it still wouldn't justify the LSA's code. Pay special attention to his brilliant argument by analogy: "If some research showed that visually handicapped people are harmed by hearing or reading (in Braille) references to sight, would that justify a code banning 'look,' 'see,' and 'stare'? . . . At best, it would create a potential clash of distinct desirables (avoiding harm vs. freedom of speech; avoiding harm vs. reliance on individual responsibility)."

"Daring"? "Brilliant"? This guy combines pedantry, hype, and humorlessness in discussing criticisms of pc that were first made around 1990. This piece is a reminder that academia is stultifying, whether it's the dominant leftwing version, or the minority rightwing variant.

[RightWhale]

In class we have a fairly wide selection also. There are some black women, but they are all from different Caribbean island nations, some Hispanics probably from Mexico or LA but of course you would never guess until they let you in on their secret, several young white women who are majoring in Liberal Arts and will have a career in some profession other than engineering, an assortment of jocks who don't know what to think about anything, a fair number of heavyset young white males who have done police work and want a career in police, a couple Christian guitarists, and it was all fine until me, a bass player. Ooh, shudder, a bass player. Maybe I should make up something more PC.

[CasearianDaoist]

quite cunning.

[WOSG]

It's brilliant because the boneheads who insist on the phoney PC feminization of language didnt bother to think of such obvious points. It's daring because anyone challenging the PC orthodoxy is speaking Truth to Power, and if they ever had an academic career, they just kiss it g'bye with such views.

The attempt by the Left to use their power in academia to define language itself is Orwellian indeed. I've seen the effect in papers and books and I uniformly despise it.

Hear hear for defending against such codes and speaking up for freedom of expression.

[ThinkFreedom]

"I agree with Mr. Postal's comments. Try this on for size: "One small step for men, women, gays, lesbians, transgendered, and animal lovers. One giant leap for womynkind." Sorta rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Congressman Billybob"

[sarcasm]You're such a racist, you forgot African-Americans and Latino's, and Native Americans, and Islamists, Hindus, Buddhists... all need to be specifically mentioned by name according to the PC code of practice[/sarcasm]

[misterrob]

You forgo the business schools....

Usually capitalistic types who wear business wear style clothes and not only bathe but shave...

And these are the female profs!!!

:-))

[Verginius Rufus]

Well, well, what a coincidence. French general Paul Aussaresses just happens to be mentioned in an article in today's Wall Street Journal about Chile ("What Really Happened in Chile 30 Years Ago," by James R. Whelan, on page A11):

"...French secret service agents who had waged France's savage war in the 1950s against Algerian independence forces coached secret police organizations in Chile--and also Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The man who headed Chile's secret police, Manuel Contreras, said recently that Gen. Paul Aussaresses, former head of the French intelligence service, personally trained Chilean agents in Brazil. In his monumental work, 'Modern Times,' historian Paul Johnson wrote that the French terror units headed by Gen. Aussaresses 'murdered and tortured prisoners, and on a wide scale. In this case, neither liberal France nor the international community raised a whimper of protest.'"

[wizardoz]

I never get to see the business schools, in my university I'm caged up in the Liberal Arts department with occasional forays through Engineering and Computer Science on my way to the McDonalds.

[mrustow]

It's brilliant because the boneheads who insist on the phoney PC feminization of language didnt bother to think of such obvious points. It's daring because anyone challenging the PC orthodoxy is speaking Truth to Power, and if they ever had an academic career, they just kiss it g'bye with such views.

The attempt by the Left to use their power in academia to define language itself is Orwellian indeed. I've seen the effect in papers and books and I uniformly despise it.

Hear hear for defending against such codes and speaking up for freedom of expression.

I take back what I said about such criticism having begun ca. 1990. Criticisms of the feminazi language police began almost thirty years ago. But this guy wouldn't have come off as brilliant even then. As for whether his piece is daring, that depends on whether he is he tenured. If he has tenure, then it's not daring, because there's nothing his colleagues and bosses can do to him. He has a guaranteed, lifetime job. If, however, he doesn't have tenure, then we can talk about daring.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Indeed, these textbooks, which go back as far as 1969, should have shown more sensitivity when it comes to the recognition of gay feelings.

Doesn't going back to that year, and no further, show an oralsexist bias?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Sometimes the efforts to ward off stereotypes become just nonsensical, as when the authors complain that men appear too often with cars and that they are always the ones fixing them. "No females fix cars in any of the ten textbooks, while 53 males do so."

So, let's hear it: how many women reading this post want to become auto mechanics?

[WOSG]

"Underlying that incapacity is a dogmatic, total assurance of knowing exactly what things other people should be allowed to say. I believe the same impulse underlies the LSA guideline."

The above statement is totally true and it bears repeating! It doesnt matter if it's been said before; it bears repeating precisely because it hasnt sunk in to the undernourished minds of the humanities depts. The leftists on campus have continued their "Closing of the American Mind" project to deconstruct American culture and values and displace it with their egalitarian anti-moralist agenda. Any attempt to stand athwart that trend and call it the flawed dogma that it is deserves credit not censure.

[arasina]

I love your descriptions! I was then inspired to look at your profile, which is also nicely written. Good luck! :o)

[WOSG]

Another point: The same underlying 'impulse' for this linguistic code is the one animating the 'hate speech' codes.

Many EU places (and canada) have now implemented so-called "hate speech" laws, and invariably they are letting real hate-mongers (Villepan!) go while some reasoned people who express strong moral convictions at variance with PC dogma are jailed merely fo expressing views. In short, 'hate speech' codes attack freedom of speech. The LSA codes do the same wrt academic freedom of expression.