Ridding ourselves of the term "descriptivist".

[metal56]

Lohn Lawler, linguist, replies to an accusation of being a descriptivist.

"If you want a label that I'll accept, try linguist. Linguistics is a science, and of course scientists must describe the objects of their study; again, nothing new. There are lots of other things we do, too; though describing phenomena as completely and accurately as possible is very important. It turns out in linguistics, as it does in all sciences, that you have to observe very carefully, and report what you find very, very carefully, if you want to learn anything you didn't already know. Or thought you knew. So in that sense I'm a (lowercase) "descriptivist", like any other scientist, though the word is not one I have any use for.

But you appear to mean something different by "Descriptivist", some kind of side-taking in somebody else's perennial dispute, and I'm afraid that, frankly, I don't give a damn about any of that."

Go, John, go!

Edited to add link:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/ ... ining.html

[abufletcher]

Two Views on the Goals of Description:

Imagine a situation where two researchers (avoiding for the moment the baggage-laden term "scientist") have happened upon a group of people in a public place who are all "gathered around" a street performer. Each of our researchers decides to try to describe this social phenomenon.

Researcher #1 studies the phenomenon and concludes that the rule being followed is that members of the "audience" form a circle -- or, in certain specifiable situations, a semi-circle -- with the performer at the center.

Researcher #2 studies the same phenomenon, but with a very different mindset, and comes to the conclusion that there is no orientation whatsoever to "circleness" but rather that members of the audience are oriented to two simple social practices, which when enacted in unison produce the effect witnessed by researcher #1. The two social practices are 1) stand X distance away from a street performer -- or have your actions be accountably interpretable by others and 2) stand Y distance away from other random audience members -- or again have your actions be accountably interpretable by other.

What these two "results" represent are the "-etic" (external, researcher-driven, "formalist") description vs. an "-emic" (internal, participant-oriented, situated) description. Which one is right? Well, in some ways they both are. But in other very important ways researcher #2's explanation goes a lot deeper and goes a lot further towards explaining the actual observed micro-behaviors of the phenomenon.

For example, while the shape formed by the audience members might roughly (i.e. "formally") be describable as a circle, careful measurements would reveal a number of "aberations" -- and explicating these aberations would be a major difficulty for the "stand in a circle" researcher. He might, for example, have to suppose that people's spatial perception was imperfect and resulted in "performance errors" in their attempts to postion themselves in a perfect circle.

Researcher #2, however, is in a much better position. Since her emic description is based on participant orientations to normative practices rather than abstract rules, researcher #1's "aberations" are not only unproblematic but rather to be expected. Variations in the average X (distance to performer) are interpretable, both to participants as well as researchers, as differences in the degree of engagement with the performer. Variations in the average Y (distance between audience members) follow general community practices regarding proximics, e.g. stand X distance away from strangers when standing side by side.

In short, mainstream linguistics and mainstream SLA have focused almost exclusively on -etic descriptions. Researchers in these fields (especially those who like to call themselves "scientists") throw about terms like "objective," "generalizable," "abstract" which are taken to be "postive" attributes. But the results from this sort of theorising (and description) may be no more "real" (or even finely descriptive) of the phenomenon of language than the circle was for the behavior of the audience. The circle is nothing more than a fanciful abstraction in the mind of the reseacher -- one which has no reality whatsoever for the participants involved in the event.

I'd call researcher #1 a "Descriptivist."

[fluffyhamster]

The circle is nothing more than a fanciful abstraction in the mind of the reseacher -- one which has no reality whatsoever for the participants involved in the event.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm generally aware of the vague circle-like formations of the throng when I'm in the vicinity of street performances.

[abufletcher]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm generally aware of the vague circle-like formations of the throng when I'm in the vicinity of street performances.

Everyone's an amateur researcher in their own way. But of course recognizing that people stand in "vague circle-like formations" isn't a very "scientific" description. Would you actually claim that your choice of where to stand is based on "taking a place along the circle?" Besides, there would have to be something seriously wrong with the world, or our perceptions of it, if etic descriptions didn't bare at least a "vague" similarity to results of emic practices.

[fluffyhamster]

I have no problems with either viewpoint: that I'm perhaps standing on the circumference of a circle (i.e. the innermost edge of the crowd), or that in relation to person A, B and C, I am not in fact part of a circumference at all but simply out of their elbow, headbutt or buttcrack fart range as well as unlikely to get scorched by the fire eater's fireballs; either way, the underlying questions seem to be similar: 'How do people stand in this situation, and why so?'.

[abufletcher]

either way, the underlying questions seem to be similar: 'How do people stand in this situation, and why so?'.

Sure the question is the same. But that's not what matters. What matters is the sort of "answer" you look for. Personally, I feel an awful lot of linguistic energy has been squandered looking for the wrong kind of answer -- and a lot of language teaching has been based on this wrong kind of answer.

And just in case I didn't make my argument quite transparent enough, that "wrong" kind of answer I'm talking about are the grammar rules (or more grandiosely "grammatical descriptions") that most language teachers seem to eat and breath.

[metal56]

Phew, Abu, I was waiting for this bit: "In short, mainstream linguistics and mainstream SLA have focused almost exclusively on -etic descriptions."

[fluffyhamster]

I could kind of see what you were driving at, and I'd agree that "whatever" grammatical description for its own sake is only satisfying to a certain degree (the exact degree depending on whether one likes it and feels it is sufficient for one's purposes).

I'm reading up on Hallidayan stuff at the moment...having three metafunctions/ways of approaching the description (which interweave and interact) is interesting...but I'm not sure if three are enough or, indeed, too many!

[metal56]

Would you actually claim that your choice of where to stand is based on "taking a place along the circle?"

I was a street perfomer for many years, and many years ago. I found that most people stood in a position from where they could quickly escape at the end of the show when it came to parting with cash.

[lolwhites]

Let me see if I understand abu's analysis with a language example:

Two grammarians are analysing the use of the Present Perfect. They both observe that constructions such as "I have gone on holiday last year" are rare except for non-native speakers learning English. Grammarian 1 concludes that the Present Perfect cannot be used with definite past time references. Grammarian 2 concludes that the meaning carried by the Present Perfect is not the same as the meaning carried by "last year". What G1 sees as a syntax error, G2 sees as something that it simply wouldn't occur to a native speaker to say as people aren't normally in the habit of contradicting themselves in one sentence.

Aren't they both "descriptivists" in the sense that both are trying to describe facts about the language, but while G1 is concentrating on what happens at the surface, G2 is going deeper and is revealing more about how the language really works.

[metal56]

Aren't they both "descriptivists" in the sense that both are trying to describe facts about the language, but while G1 is concentrating on what happens at the surface, G2 is going deeper and is revealing more about how the language really works.

Which one would fit this desription?

<>But you appear to mean something different by "Descriptivist", some kind of side-taking in somebody else's perennial dispute, and I'm afraid that, frankly, I don't give a damn about any of that." >>

[abufletcher]

Let me see if I understand abu's analysis with a language example:

Two grammarians are analysing the use of the Present Perfect. They both observe that constructions such as "I have gone on holiday last year" are rare except for non-native speakers learning English. Grammarian 1 concludes that the Present Perfect cannot be used with definite past time references. Grammarian 2 concludes that the meaning carried by the Present Perfect is not the same as the meaning carried by "last year". What G1 sees as a syntax error, G2 sees as something that it simply wouldn't occur to a native speaker to say as people aren't normally in the habit of contradicting themselves in one sentence.

I would consider both of these analyses firmly within the -etic (researcher #1) camp. Both are researcher-driven perspectives. Neither attempts to understand how participants themselves orient to (and employ in interaction) the phenomonon in question. In fact, the entire framework for this "research question," namely formulations such as "present perfect" may need to be critically examined -- as would the very nature of what might be called "grammar."


BTW, here are a few of my favorite quotes on what grammar might be:

"Grammar, of course, is the model of closely ordered, routinely observable social activities." (Sacks, 1992:31[Fall 1964, lecture 4])

“[grammar is a phenomenon] whose status is constantly being renegotiated in speech and which cannot be distinguished in principle from strategies for building discourses.” (Hopper, 1988:118, cited from Larson-Freeman, 2003 Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring.)

“...what we think of as grammar may be best understood as combinations of reusable fragments.” (Thompson, 2001, ms)

[abufletcher]

I was a street perfomer for many years, and many years ago. I found that most people stood in a position from where they could quickly escape at the end of the show when it came to parting with cash.

I'd say this is right on the money -- so to speak! And would definitely be part of how X is calculated! You've probably also had the experience of the "spectator" that comes way too close.

[abufletcher]

Grammarian 2 concludes that the meaning carried by the Present Perfect is not the same as the meaning carried by "last year". What G1 sees as a syntax error, G2 sees as something that it simply wouldn't occur to a native speaker to say as people aren't normally in the habit of contradicting themselves in one sentence.

Actually, I was rereading this and G2's position is certainly a lot closer to an -emic perspective.

[lolwhites]

I was hoping you'd say that, abu. My point was that what is often presented as a rules system is IMO better seen as a semantic system, where the meanings carried by the structures and lexical items have to be coherent for the utterance to be considered "grammatical". I once saw a book of grammar exercises that said, almost as a footnote, that teachers should make students aware that structure sometimes carries meaning; surely structure always carries meaning.

BTW I'm aware that this doesn't answer Metal's original question, and I'm not sure which of the two grammarians is "descriptivist" in Lawler's book. I originally came into contact with the term as opposed to "prescriptivist" - the latter laying down rules regarding what was or wasn't allowed (Don't say "ain't", Don't use a preposition to end a sentence with....) while the former tried to infer rules from what people actually say and write them down. Perhaps if we knew why Lawler was accused of being a descriptivist I'd be able to comment further.