When Nunberg attacks

Geoff Nunberg, the leftwing political activist and linguist who wrote Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show, is upset with me for connecting George Lakoff with his former professor, Noam Chomsky:

Many people assume that there’s some connection between Chomsky’s politics and his linguistics, and a lot of them go on to conclude that linguistics itself is constituitively a leftish discipline. So when Lakoff emerged as an influential political figure, it seemed natural to blur both his politics and his linguistics with Chomsky’s, particularly if for those who didn’t know jack about linguistics. Whatever your political views, it’s a depressing reminder of how widespread the ignorance about the field of linguistics is (not that we exactly needed another one). But then it’s probably asking too much to expect people who find it expedient to conflate Lakoff’s garden-variety liberalism with Chomsky’s anarcho-syndicalism to take the trouble to learn the difference between Chomsky’s minimalism and Lakoff’s cognitive linguistics. Oh well, they have the sense they were born with.

Please. I called Lakoff a “protege” of Chomsky’s because one of the meanings of that word is “pupil”. I’m aware that Lakoff went on to develop his own school of linguistics and a set of political beliefs that differ from Chomsky’s at the margins. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Chomsky was the prototype of linguist-cum-lefty-activist, and Lakoff was a student who follows in the master’s footsteps along the broad program while differing in some of the details. Nunberg follows the same (by now) well-worn path, so (naturally) he sees distinctions that don’t matter to civilians. For the record, Lakoff’s linguistics are much less loony than Chomsky’s, but that never was the issue. I’m concerned about the use of the science of linguistics to mislead voters, and on that front Chomsky and Lakoff are strongly aligned.

UPDATE: A more accurate description of Lakoff is “Chomsky wannabe.” When you criticize linguists, be very careful about your terminology as they’ll pick you to death with meaningless distinctions.

7 thoughts on “When Nunberg attacks”

  1. Or you got caught out in some lazy thinking and now you’re doing a magic dance to avoid copping to it. Funny how anyone who disagrees with you is a “left-wing political activist.” No, hang on, it’s sad.

  2. I suppose I should unpack that a bit. It’s sad that when somebody says something that disagrees with you, your first words have to be “left-wing activist,” as though your being wrong can be magically undone by framing the sensible point being made as coming from a “left-wing activist” first rather than, you know, a real person.

    The irony is that this sources from somebody who has written a book on how the Right has hijacked sensible discourse by using hyphenated hysteria to frame and label any argument… and the first thing you do, when called on your erroneous labelling of somebody, the very first words in your rebuttal do what?

    That’s right. Frame. With hyphens.

    Sad.

  3. The guy writes a book called “Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show” and I can’t say he’s a lefty?

    Odd.

  4. So anyone who doesn’t agree with the far right is instantly extremely left wing?

    Strange boy……

  5. Anyone who attacks the entire conservative movement is automatically somewhat left of center, which is all I said. You’re the one talking about extremes and far reaches.

  6. I think combining the old start of this post with the one you have now would be better (in terms of being amusingly self-referential). That is:

    [Left-wing political activist and linguist Geoff Nunberg][who wrote Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show, ] …

    As to whatever similarities between Chomsky and Lakoff, I’d put it in the category that the US and China seem close when you’re off on another planet entirely.

  7. Both are linguists who seek to dominate political thinking on the left, and that’s where the similarity ends. Lakoff was an undergraduate student of Chomsky’s, so there’s an Oedipal element to the competition.

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