Sociolinguistics

The Rickford reading makes the argument that sociolinguist should contribute more to what has been an unequal partnership between linguists and the African American Community. Towards the beginning of the article, the author gives a brief account of the distinctive contributions AAVE has made, before launching into his argument that sociolinguists should do more. The argument is made that more should be done to attract African American students to linguistics and increase representation in linguistics departments and that linguists should be more sensitive to using AAVE stereotypes, among other recommendations. Finally, Rickford argues in favor of involving the researched group in linguistics research and emphasizing advocacy - not just ethics.

It was interesting to hear Rickford’s suggestions for direct community service. It’s tempting for me to think of linguistics as a field like philosophy in that there is not much opportunity for hands-on application. But more interesting than his suggestions was the reason he was pushing linguists to give back - the notion that linguists owe support for the communities they study. Rickford seems to take this for granted, and I’m not sure exactly why. We don’t usually think that historians or economists are responsible for contributing to the groups they study, nor does it seem that ethical linguistic study harms subjects in any way. I would be interested to hear why Rickford thinks linguists have this responsibility and if he thinks it extends to other academics.

One thing that confused me about the readings was that they didn’t seem at all related. The only connection I could come up with is that they could both be considered sociolinguistics.

The Lupyan paper presented experimental evidence to support the conclusion that despite the appearance that categories have stable, abstract mental representations, they actually have a “graded, flexible structure.” For instance, the experiments demonstrated that referring to figures as triangles statistically increased the number of sides subjects reported had the same length, which was interpreted as evidence that the cue “triangle” brings to mind a perceptual representation with equilateral form, not a “symbolic” representation. These “idealized perceptual states” are further characterized as “prototypes,” and language is discussed as a cue for perceptual states.

One of Lupyan’s secondary ambitions is to explain how abstract reasoning is possible. Maybe I am failing to grasp the nuances in his argument, but it seems inconsistent. In some places he asserts that reasoning is based on “continuous representational spaces,” but he also claims that during abstract reasoning, we can transform them into “more discretized and abstract representations.” Well, if we also use discretized abstract versions of the concepts, why does Lupyan give priority to the idealized perceptual versions? Why does he reject abstract reasoning as evidence that “stable, symbolic” concepts exist too?