Archives for December 2010

THE BOOKSHELF: EAVESDROPPING.

December 2, 2010 by 30 Comments

I recently finished the copy of John L. Locke’s recent Eavesdropping: An Intimate History that the publisher was good enough to send me, and I feel that it has given me a new keyhole through which to peep at the world. Eavesdropping would not, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with language as such, and yet the author is Professor of Linguistics at Lehman College. He says in the prologue that a colleague asked him why he had chosen the subject, which “must have seemed a radical departure from my previous work on the psychology of language.” Locke explained that he “had come across Marjorie McIntosh’s analysis of court records indicating that five and six centuries ago, English citizens had, in impressive numbers, been arrested for eavesdropping” and wondered “what, in the medieval mind, would have caused this behavior to be criminalized, and what the ‘criminals’ themselves were doing, or thought they were doing”; he “had also begun to study ethology, a field that deals with behavior in a broad range of species, and had encountered the work of Peter McGregor”:

He pointed out that birds increase their chances of survival by monitoring the long-distance calls of other birds – signals that are not even intended for their ears. Such interceptions, McGregor noted, are ignored by all existing models of animal communication…. If real people also tune in to each other, and become usefully informed in the process, then theories of human communication must explain these things that real people do.

But they have not done so. … The reason why social scientists have failed to document equivalent levels of eavesdropping in humans, however, is not because they looked for it and discovered that there was nothing to be seen. They never looked in the first place.

Why they did not, I think, is linked to a long-standing tendency of philosophers and psychologists to put humans on a pedestal, to regard our species as more intelligent and rational than other animals. This view could not be sustained if humans were on a continuum with other primates and mammals, so they concentrated on the behaviors accounting for, and related to, Man’s best and highest accomplishments. Central to these was language, the symbolic code that enables speakers to consciously transmit thought to willing listeners. This kept other animals safely at bay but, paradoxically, also excluded important facts about human communication.

That’s an impressive and intriguing program for a study—a program, however, that this book only partially fulfills.

[Read more…]

WE ARE THE LINGUISTS.

December 2, 2010 by 2 Comments

The Theoretical Linguistics program at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest celebrated its twentieth anniversary with this delightful video. I’m so charmed I won’t even vent about the worldview expressed in “We are the ones who make a brighter day by making theories”; they are, after all, members of the Theoretical Linguistics program. But I will explain one WTF moment by quoting a commenter at Language Log, where I found the video:

Let me clear this up: the person you see at 1:52 is indeed Miklos Torkenczy, but it’s not his voice. The singing comes from the amazing Agnes Fule (and it’s not a falsetto), who you can occasionally see in the background. This was Miklos’s wish, who wanted to share his overflowing enthusiasm with the world, but was afraid of the damage he might cause with his own voice.

Another commenter clarifies that the soprano/student’s name is Ágnes (Ági) Füle. Enjoy! (Oh, and if you’re curious about the word “Hang” in the credits at the end, it’s the Hungarian word for ‘sound,’ of unknown etymology.)

A YEAR IN READING 2010.

December 1, 2010 by 3 Comments

C. Max Magee of The Millions has an annual tradition of asking people to talk about books they’ve read and enjoyed during the previous year, and he has once again begun the series with my contribution; here it is, featuring my wise words on Marshall Berman, Andrey Platonov, and Vladislav Zubok, all of whom will be familiar to regular readers of LH. I look forward to seeing what other contributors recommend.

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