A Review (What Were OUP Thinking?).

I am a bit hesitant to post David J. Lobina’s lengthy 3 Quarks Daily takedown of Inclusion in Linguistics because it could be seen as anti-diversity and anti-inclusion and, well, just plain reactionary, but that kind of thinking leads to intellectual sterility, and it seems to me (not having seen the actual book, mind you) that Lobina’s bile is justified. In any case, it is highly entertaining, and I think that is enough of a basis to present these excerpts to you; he introduces it by saying “this is possibly the worst book I have ever read in my career,” so you have been warned:

The volume Inclusion in Linguistics showcases the work of over 40 authors across 20 chapters on what is perceived to be a lack of inclusion in the field of linguistics, with North America as the main focus of attention (with some exceptions). Edited by Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz, this collection of papers is part of a project that includes the volume Decolonizing Linguistics, also published by Oxford University Press. […] The volume itself is divided into 4 thematic parts. Part 1 focuses on intersectional models of inclusion; Part 2 details possible institutional pathways to achieve more inclusion in linguistics; Part 3 is devoted to some of the resources available to teachers and lecturers to build more inclusive classrooms in schools and universities; and Part 4 outlines various examples of inclusive public engagement in the field. […]

What to make of it?

Well, it is hard to believe this book exists at all; or rather, it is hard to believe that Oxford University Press has published this volume under its Oxford Academy section. Inclusion in Linguistics is mostly a product of political advocacy, not of scholarship, and whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, the problem here is that both the politics and the advocacy on display are incredibly tendentious. The book is populated by myriad claims and denunciations, and even though most of these are rather contentious in nature, they all go largely unargued for (in addition, some material is close to mockery and even slander, and one has to wonder what OUP were thinking; more about this below).

The book is also rather parochial in outlook; most of the arguments and claims can only be understood within the context of certain social and political undercurrents in North America, some of which the contributors happen to exemplify quite neatly, and there is furthermore a fair amount of preaching to the already converted, this more clearly in evidence when it comes to the significant amount of jargon the reader encounters, which is rarely defined let alone explained – it is instead simply assumed to be common currency, and moreover correct. As a case in point, much of the material in this volume will be largely incomprehensible to most readers in Italy, Spain, and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, the three countries I know well, and partly because of the language (also, the book alludes to social conditions that don’t really translate to those three countries). […]

Moving on to the scholarship, the editors start off the volume by explicitly rejecting some of what many would regard as basic tenets of Wissenschaft – a German term that is more expansive than the English word “science”, thus involving the human sciences, and meant to refer to scientific fields that ‘involve rigorous and teachable methods for investigating and acquiring knowledge about their subject matters’ (Leiter, 2024). In the Introduction to the volume, then, the editors denounce and moreover reject the notion that ‘research discovery and scholarly knowledge must be personally distant or seemingly objective for the author to have authority and expertise’, a position they claim constitutes a case of colonialism and white supremacy (pp. 15-6), though no explanation or justification is given for the sweeping statement. Similar sentiments are expressed in many of the contributions, again with little to no elaboration, and usually presented as simple statements of fact. Readers who might view the editors’ position on science and the systematic pursue of knowledge as not a little preposterous will be excused for quickly skimming through the book, or giving it a pass altogether. More importantly, perhaps, such views can have the unfortunate effect of antagonising those of us who might otherwise be sympathetic to some issues from the volume, and who would have welcomed more detail – and some argumentation. […]

I should add that I find the kind of talk on inclusion and diversity in the book surprisingly divisive, and furthermore surprising coming from linguistics; divisive because the language around diversity is often couched as if people of different characteristics lived in different realities as somewhat “closed groups” – or trapped in cultural enclosures, as Jürgen Habermas has put it (see here); and surprising coming from the field given that linguists have often emphasised the theoretical validity of any of the world’s languages to the enterprise of studying universal properties of the language capacity (I have discussed universality, diversity, and language in here and here; the former argues that diversity needs to be understood within the concept of universality; the latter revisits the work of the anarchist thinker Rudolf Rocker and in so doing includes discussion of national languages and standards, topics touched upon in the volume too). […]

All in all, it seems to me that the situation in this volume is as follows: many of the authors do not seem to believe that their subject matter or field of study is scientific or involves systematic knowledge as these concepts are customarily understood (as Wissenschaft), whilst some of the authors seem to confuse (or indeed conflate) scientific study with political advocacy. If the former is the case, then one needs to ignore the talk about positionality and identities and instead just judge whether the knowledge on offer adds to Wissenschaft or not, regardless of where it comes from. If the latter is the case, though, one needs to recognise that political advocacy is not Wissenschaft and advocacy need not always be the concern of scholarship. […]

I earlier alluded to lost opportunities. There was plenty of useful information in the book as well as a number of interesting surveys and interviews (though the samples were far too small for the conclusions that are drawn from them), but most issues of relevance were treated far too briefly and far too superficially. Some topics deserved more thorough and sustained discussion – the history and current status of Historically Black Colleges is a case in point – and a wide readership would have been found for a more judicious book (and perhaps even an international readership if the approach had not been so insular). What we have instead is a book displaying incredibly tendentious and parochial politics, poor scholarship, and an angry and divisive tone throughout, resulting in an exhausting to read list of claims, denunciations, grievances, and disqualifications. Most contributors had, quite simply, an axe to grind here, but what they described in their chapters was often more a case of how they would like the world to be instead of what the world really is like.

The reader could have been spared some of the mockery and slander too if the editors had not been so inflexible. In the preface, we are told that the project decided against a regular reviewing process for each contribution because, of course, this is susceptible to colonisation (p. xviii), opting instead for group workshops and revisions. It is not unreasonable to believe that a regular reviewing process could at least have avoided the worst excesses typical of political group thinking. No doubt the editors view such a reviewing process as an example of the gatekeeping ideologies they denounce in various places in the book, ideologies that ‘rely upon assimilatory replication models of academia that are grounded in and designed to maintain white-supremacist, colonial, normatively embodied, abled, and cis male-hegemonic views…[continues ad nauseum]’ (p. 444).

The volume could at least have been printed on recycled paper, but alas, this was not to be.

Obviously he’s cherry-picked the worst examples for our edification, but I’m sure he didn’t invent them, and the whole picture is all too plausible given recent trends in academia. I’m all for diversity and inclusion myself, but I’m also for science and, yes, objectivity (Wissenschaft, if you will) and I can’t abide scholarship that turns its back on such things. Thanks, Peter!