I suddenly realized that I hadn’t gotten around to alerting y’all to the existence of History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences (Hiphilangsci.net), whose About page says:
This blog is devoted to exploring and promoting the great diversity that exists in the study of language, in the past and today. Each blog post seeks to introduce a topic, idea or approach in language study — historical, current or completely new — with an invitation to all readers to engage in discussion in the comments. Everyone is welcome to contribute, regardless of academic standing, although there is an expectation that all contributions will be well informed. Controversial or unconventional views are not discriminated against, but polemical attitudes are discouraged. We want to maintain a scholarly atmosphere marked by reasoned argument, evidence and tolerance, and free of simple opinion-trading.
If you would like to write a post for the blog, please get in touch with a one-paragraph description. All posts are informally reviewed before they are published, but always with the blog’s goal of promoting diversity of opinion and approach in mind. Our guidelines are very minimal: posts should be around 1,000 to 1,500 words and outline their topic without being overly technical or assuming too much background knowledge. Most posts should contain links to web resources and references to printed literature, although more free-ranging, speculative posts unsupported by specific references will also be accepted.
(It also says it in French, Spanish, and German, though sadly not in Welsh.) Thanks, Bathrobe!
Some interesting stuff, but almost no comments. I counted less than 10 for 2021. And it is not like they completely eschew serving red meat, “Public talk online: The “Political” and the Language-Dialect Dichotomy, or Fact-Checking Noam Chomsky” should have evinced some well informed contributions whether controversial or unconventional, but in a scholarly atmosphere marked by reasoned argument, evidence and tolerance. Though it would probably also involve some polemical attitudes and simple opinion-trading.
The abbreviated title of the blog is somewhat unfortunate. I couldn’t make heads or tails about it, but concluded that there it is probably not a blog devoted to angst over Hiphil.
Yes and yes. It’s too bad there’s not more discussion.
I originally found the site through a talk on von der Gabelentz’s role in linguistic typology (he appears to have been the first to use the term “Typologie”, although it was wrongly published as “Hypologie”). An interesting talk. While von der Gabelentz’s thinking still typified some of the colonialist/racist discourse of the 19th century, he was actually something of a forgotten precursor to later developments.
Looking through the site again, the mixture of topics is broad and conceals some hidden gems. It really does deserve more attention.
I used to parse it as hip-hi-… no, it’s not a hip blog.
I too read it as hip-high-lang-sci, and bethought me of hip boots (the kind worn for fishing or mud-trekking) for wading through the swamp of Linguistic Science.
You win.