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The linguistics delusion
Geoffrey Sampson
Sheffield : Equinox, 2017
Geoffrey Sampson’s (2017) Linguistics Delusion argues on its face that linguistics is not science, but its precise contention is that the study of language is incompatible with a philosophy of science which establishes falsifiability as the main criterion for a valid claim to scientific status. According to Sampson, the incompatibility of language with science thus defined does not rule out the academic study of language, but it does discredit those areas of linguistics whose public warrant consists of a claim to falsifiability. Such a claim is inappropriate to language study, Sampson argues, because language is an essentially different object of inquiry than that of physics or astronomy; language use is characterized by unpredictability and defies falsifiable generalizations.
In taking aim at assumptions of generative linguistics, The Linguistics Delusion is not, of course, alone. What makes the book unique is its serial dismissal of so many approaches to linguistic study, including work in applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and some work in descriptive linguistics. In these dismissals, Sampson argues above all against a misguided scientism: an attempt to accrue respectability by assuming the values, methods, and verbal clothing of the STEM fields, and especially by attempting to generate testable theory at the expense of carefully describing individual human languages. According to Sampson, there is simply ‘not a great deal to say about languages at a theoretical level’ (p. 17); he recommends abandoning departments of linguistics and returning the study of language to departments dedicated to particular languages and literatures.
