Theory, application, and language's magical ability to make the abstract into reality

When I finished reading these two articles, I was struck by how different they were and I felt stymied about how to relate the two. Then I remembered when Rickford said, “In a quarter century of working as a graduate student and university faculty member…, I have focused mainly on descriptive, theoretical, and methodological issues rather than on the applied concerns which originally attracted me to the field. This is partly because of my excitement about the former kinds of research, and partly because of the process of appointment, tenure, and promotion - which rewards theory, and looks askance (if at all) at application.” Lupyan’s paper is just that: it focuses on “descriptive, theoretical, and methodological issues” in psychology and linguistics, and is probably rewarded by his linguistics department because of its theoretical focus. Rickford’s paper, in a way, is a critique of the kind of research Lupyan’s paper focuses on, because Lupyan’s paper is so theoretical. However, Rickford is not entirely opposed to this kind of research/work. He concludes his paper with this statement: “Increased attention to the kinds of applications [my italics] I sketch in this article can help us to respond to these needs [of the community]; and while this will take time, it need not be antithetical to the theoretical and descriptive research in which we are already engaged, but can complement and bolster it.” So, we can conclude that Rickford still believes in doing work like Lupyan is doing, but he also urges his linguist readers to use their theoretical work to give back to the community. I was particularly struck by the part of Rickford’s article where he brings up the “principle of the debt incurred” conceived by W. Labov: “An investigator who has obtained linguistic data from members of a speech community has an obligation to use the knowledge based on that data for the benefit of the community, when it has need of it.” Because this principle is ethical, I think it should apply to any academic community conducting research. 

To me, Luypan’s article was primarily about psychology and neuropsychology, but he did make some interesting points about language. I was intrigued by Luypan’s point: “Any guitar we can interact with is necessarily a particular guitar. Likewise, a picture or a sound of a guitar is specific; it cannot be ambivalent about whether it is, for example, electric or acoustic.” So concrete, tangible entities are always specific. That is easy enough to understand. Then Luypan goes on to say, “Language, on the other hand, can be [ambivalent]. Therefore the mental state activated by the word ‘guitar’ may approximate a more categorical/idealized perceptual state - a state that is more difficult to achieve without the category name and would perhaps be impossible to achieve in the absence of language entirely.” Therefore, language allows humans to speak in the abstract, despite the fact that “the abstract” does not exist in reality, only in the mind. Language facilitates the ability to make a mental connection with someone else about something that does not exist in reality. Very cool.