The Linguistics Wars (2nd Edition) p.138: When Linguistic Discussions Get Unnecessarily Emotional

(Commonplace Book)

From: The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff and the Battle Over Deep Structure by Randy Allen Harris: Second Edition 

(From p.138)

Most of the explicit enmity was not in journals or proceedings.  As in the first round of Chomskyan hostilities against the Bloomfieldians, the bulk of the invective and discourtesy was oral.  There was, for instance, a celebrated flare-up in 1967 at a small conference in La Jolla which was something of a coming-out party for Generative Semantics.  Jackendnoff rode west, as he recalls, essentially “as Chomsky’s point man” and the Generative Semanticists regarded him as a gunslinger dispatched to put down an uprising by the homesteaders.  There were several shrill shoot-outs, including the loud exchange of graphic imprecations between him and an earlier Chomskyan gunslinger of much renown, Postal. There was an equally vitriolic, and even more public exchange between Jackendoff and Lakoff a few years later, at a plenary session of the 1969 Linguistic Society of America (LSA) conference, which got increasingly heated until Lakoff said, “Well, fuck you.” Jackendoff, as Ross remembers it, “looked like he’d been slapped in the face, and then said ‘Well, fuck you, George’” (Huck & Goldsmith 1995:125) and “for several minutes [they] hurled amplified obscenities at each other before 200 embarrassed onlookers” (Newmeyer 1980a:162; 1986a: 126). (Readers for whom the use of the work fuck in public settings does not have quite the same outrageous incivility it had in 1969 can substitute racist or homophobic slurs which now have a taboo status similar to that of sexual and bodily excretion terms then.)

p.138--second edition

****End Quote*****

I actually read this page several weeks ago (this is from my reading for the week of April 30th), but I had a discussion with a friend and colleague today about needlessly vitriolic disputes in TESOL and Linguistics generally, and naturally I mentioned to him that I was reading a book on that very subject.  And then, after I got home, it occurred to me that I really should quote him a passage to give him a flavor for how things got.  So I messaged him:

By the by, on the topic of unnecessarily angry infighting in ESL and linguistics, here's a rather funny passage from that book I was showing you earlier.

and then, because we are both survivors of the Delta reading list, I added:

the Lakoff mentioned in the passage is the George Lakoff who wrote "Metaphors We Live By", a book Michael Lewis was fond of referencing.  Just in case that rings any bells for you.

************************

While I'm talking about this, I suppose I should also mention that this passage is a great example of how the second edition improves on the first edition.  (I think I mentioned this in my Weekly Reading Vlog at the time.)  See, for your reference, below the same passage from the first edition of the book.  And then notice how the same event is retold much more colorfully and with better detail above in the second edition:

Most of the explicit enmity was not in journals or proceedings. As in the first round of Chomskyan hostilities, against the Bloomfieldians, the majority of invective was oral. There was, for instance, a celebrated flare-up in 1967 at a small conference in La Jolla which was something of a coming-out party for generative semantics. Jackendoff rode west, as he recalls, essentially "as Chomsky's point man," and the generative semanticists regarded him much as Chomsky regarded Lees on his first appearance at MIT, a gunslinger sent to quell the insurrection. Unlike Lees, though, Jackendoff was not converted, and there were a number of shrill exchanges, including the loud swapping of graphic imprecations between him and another renowned Chomskyan gunslinger, Postal. There was an equally vitriolic, and even more public exchange between Jackendoff and Lakoff a few years later, at a plenary session of the 1969 Linguistic Society of America conference, "when for several minutes [they] hurled amplified obscenities at each other before 200 embarrassed onlookers" (Newmeyer, 1980a:162; 1986a:126)

p.155--first edition