Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 47:1 (2020) ► pp.79–104
Crisis in the Linguistic Society of America
The contested presidential election of 1970
Published online: 16 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00063.new
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00063.new
Summary
This article discusses and analyses the 1970 election for President of
the Linguistic Society of America. In that year, Dwight Bolinger
challenged the official candidate Martin Joos and defeated him easily. We see that it was
mainly personal and generational factors, rather than intellectual ones, that led to
Bolinger’s victory.
Résumé
Cet article discute et analyse l’élection de l’année 1970 au poste
de Président de la Linguistic Society of America. Cette année vit Dwight
Bolinger défier le candidat officiel, Martin Joos, qu’il battit aisément. Comme nous le
montrons, ce sont surtout des facteurs personnels et générationnels, plutôt
qu’intellectuels, qui expliquent la victoire de Bolinger.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Artikel beschreibt und analysiert die Wahl zum Präsidenten
der Linguistic Society of America im Jahre 1970. In dem Jahr forderte
Dwight Bolinger den offiziellen Kandidaten Martin Joos heraus und besiegte ihn mühelos. Im
Artikel wird gezeigt, dass es nicht so sehr intellektuelle, sondern vor allem persönliche
und generationsbedingte Faktoren waren, die zu Bolingers Sieg führten.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The antagonists: Martin Joos and Dwight Bolinger
- 2.1Martin Joos
- 2.2Dwight Bolinger
- 3.The prelude to the 1970 election
- 3.1The LSA in early 1970
- 3.2The 1970 Nominating Committee
- 3.3Bolinger challenges Joos
- 4.The internal debate over the contested election
- 5.The election results and their aftermath
- 6.Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
References
References (49)
Bach, Emmon. 1964. An Introduction to Transformational Grammars. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Bach, Emmon and Robert Harms (eds.). 1968. Universals in Linguistic Theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1941a. What Is Freedom? For the Individual – for Society? Norman, Oklahoma: Cooperative Books.
. 1957. Interrogative Structures of American English. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
. 1991. “First Person, Not Singular”. First Person Singular II ed. by E. F. K. Koerner, 19–45, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Francis, W. Nelson and Henry Kučera. 1967. Compositional Analysis of Present-Day American English. Providence: Brown University Press.
Friebert, Stuart. 2019. “Martin Joos”. The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers. On line: [URL]
1990. “A Further Note on the Joos Notes”. Historiographia Linguistica 171.231–233.
(ed.), 1962. Proceedings of the Second Texas Conference on Problems of Linguistic Analysis in
English. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Hockett, Charles. 1966. “Language, Mathematics, and Linguistics” Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 3: Theoretical Foundations ed by T. Sebeok, 155–304. The Hague: Mouton.
Joos, Martin. 1948. Acoustic Phonetics [=
Language Monograph 23, Supplement to Language 24: 2
]. Baltimore: Waverly Press.
. 1950. “Description of Language Design”. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 221.701–708. Reprinted in M. Joos (ed.), Readings in Linguistics, 349–356. New York, American Council of Learned Societies, 1957.
. 1961. “Linguistic Prospects in the United States”. Trends in European and American Linguistics, 1930–1960 ed. by C. Mohrmann, A. Sommerfelt, and J. Whatmough, 11–20, Utrecht: Spectrum.
. 1986. Notes on the Development of the Linguistic Society of America 1924 to
1950. Ithaca: Privately printed by J M. Cowan and C. Hockett.
Joos, Martin and F. R. Whitesell. 1951. Middle High German Courtly Reader. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Joos, Martin (ed.), 1957. Readings in Linguistics: The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America
since 1925. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.
Koerner, E. F. K. 1989. “The Chomskyan ‘Revolution’ and Its Historiography: Observations of a
Bystander”. Practicing Linguistic Historiography: Selected Essays ed. by E. F. K. Koerner, 101–146, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Ladd, D. Robert. In press. “Mid-Century American Phonology: The Post-Bloomfieldians”. Oxford Handbook of the History of Phonology ed. by B. Elan Dresher and Harry van der Hulst, xxx–xxx, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lees, Robert B. 1960. “Review of Interrogative Structures of American English, by
Dwight Bolinger”. Word 161.119–125.
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1983. Grammatical Theory: Its Limits and Its Possibilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2019. “Martin Joos’s Readings in Linguistics: A Publication
History”. Historiographia Linguistica 461.291–346.
Nunberg, Geoffrey. 1992. “Hayakawa and Bolinger”, Linguist List 3.255, <[URL]>.
Paper, Herbert H. and Mohammad H. Jazayery. 1955. The Writing System of Modern Persian. Washington: American Council of Learned Societies.
Samarin, William J. 1998. “C’est passionnant d’être passionné”. First Person Singular III: Autobiographies by North American Scholars in the
Language Sciences ed. by E. F. K. Koerner, 187–226, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
