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Captainproton Posted 21 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Is Linguistics scientific or not?

0 Hey everyone, I've got a question for a paper due in soon and I would appreciate some input as I'm drawing a blank at the moment. 02br
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00Is Modern Linguistics scientific or not? Take into account its general approach/ philosophy? How about the way actual analysis is carried out? Is it scientific with respect to certain things, but not others? 02br
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00Any input or ideas would be greatly appreciated. 0-
  

Top answer

0 That's a good question for a paper because there will be plenty to say. 02br 00Are you required to take a single view and defend it? 02br 00Or are you required to give the pros and cons of each view?

— CalifJim

  • 0 That's a good question for a paper because there will be plenty to say.
  • 02br 00Are you required to take a single view and defend it?
  • 02br 00Or are you required to give the pros and cons of each view?
  • 02br 02br 00In any case, I would argue that modern linguistics is a 'soft' science like the social sciences, physics being the 'hardest' of the sciences.
  • Linguists believe they are being scientific when they enforce the idea that no value judgments are to be made about any use of any language.
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18 Answers
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0 That's a good question for a paper because there will be plenty to say. 02br
00Are you required to take a single view and defend it? 02br
00Or are you required to give the pros and cons of each view? 02br
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00In any case, I would argue that modern linguistics is a 'soft' science like the social sciences, physics being the 'hardest' of the sciences
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0 Hello Capt. P. 02br
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00You may be interested in this extract by Karl Popper. More may be found at: 05000 02br
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00(Science as Falsification) 02br
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001. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations. 02br
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002. Confirm
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0 To MrPedantic. I cannot agree more. Who are you...? Are you a philosopher..? I'm always telling myself: I'm constructing my theory as rigid as possible in order to be easily refuted. I will be glad if it will lead to some development. So... I repeat: I cannot agree more with you. 02br
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00To captainproton. Hi! I'm not a linguist, but a "would be" lingu
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0 Hello Roro 02br
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00I'm sorry to say I didn't devise the contents of my post myself – they're the words of Karl Popper! 02br
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00I like this thought of yours: "I'm constructing my theory as rigid as possible in order to be easily refuted". 02br
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00I wholeheartedly agree with that principle. 02br
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0 The trouble is though, linguistic issues are a nightmare to test. 02br
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00Especially issues in Applied Linguistics. 02br
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00The academics go ahead and draw big silly conclusions from their pathetic tests in a few a-typical classrooms though. 0-
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0 Hello, woodcutter. Nice to meet you. I agree with you. Without some universal metalanguage, such as in physics or mathematics, linguists will not be able to even communicate with each other. 02br
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00I really love linguistics, though.... I'm grumbling here a little bit.... 02br
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0 I'm not averse to linguistics. It puzzles me though why its practitioners want to call it a 'science'. It involves collecting and analysing data; but so does a sales & marketing breakdown. 02br
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00Linguistics seems to me more like a branch of rhetoric, in the medieval sense. 02br
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00Good to see Tristram here. 02br
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00MrP
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0 Hmmmm. The town crier used to deal with linguistic issues? 02br
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00In my view, science is when you make a prediction, you test it, and if you are right you make a theory, which ought to enable more correct predictions. (ie there must be a chance for it to be wrong) That's it. (I've never known why the world needed KP for that insight). 02br
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00So
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0 Well, I was thinking more of 'rhetoric' as in the 'trivium' of medieval universities. Fairly exhaustive verbal analysis. 02br
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00MrP 0-
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0 There surely is that. 02br
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00Do you really think that it amounts to no more than that? I thought I was extreme! 0-
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