Fish out of school?

I should probably repent of many of the things I've said about education. But only because I think I probably sounded like Stanley Fish.

His fears have been the topic of much discussion lately, and for a while I dabbled in tentative comments because I found myself confused about how to read his recent blog post/book review.

Friends have commented on it and pointed at it and commented still more on it. Mr Verb has given it the twice over, and Mark Liberman has decided to fry him some Fish too. [Update: I have to mention Polyglot's fine post as well.]

I would suggest reading all of these of course. But especially the comments on Liberman's piece where there has been an excellent ex-change of ideas. (I put that hyphen in there for you Santos and now I feel like a filthy whore.)

Two ideas that I reject: 1) That education should try to not be utile. 2) That the humanities are in danger.

Regarding the first:
The differences between basic and applied science are not all clear. Fish embraces the argument that the difference between applied skill and basic theory is an important one. And I can agree, if only because finding those differences will foster beneficial, and perhaps merely interesting, discussion. Categorization is a fine practice. I have no problem with the pursuit of delineations. The imposition of delineations is less valuable to me.

So the insistence on inutility as a requirement is ridiculous. Fish's definition of theory, or learning which is expressly focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining (Oakeshott's words) is:

understanding and explaining anything as long as the exercise is not performed with the purpose of intervening in the social and political crises of the moment, as long, that is, as the activity is not regarded as instrumental – valued for its contribution to something more important than itself.

Those as long as lines get me. Why not say even if there is no purpose of intervention? There is no reason to insist that no useful goal be present. Even if that goal has political implications. Insisting on non-instrumental study is only necessary if we don't trust the scholars to reach worthy understanding. With such insistence Fish has already judged theories and creations that he has not yet seen or known.

Fish is setting the stakes around a perfectly fine pursuit: aesthetics that survive without apologetics. This could be simply because he would like that pursuit of happiness protected. It could also be because he believes education needs it. But his argument must then snake around to its point. Such a scholarly path is useless by his own demand. So why does he argue it's important? For its own sake. And why should we care about its own sake? Is it an important type of scholarship? To whom? To the people who do it. Can it be important to anyone else? No. So why should anyone else care? They shouldn't.

This is of course a false argument I've made. I'm counting on importance being identical to utility. But my disagreement stands. Fish's insistence on purposeful purposelessness relies on intrinsic importance. But his defense of intrinsic importance does not adequately indict utility. Unless he believes that utility or an effective agenda is incompatible with intrinsic importance his argument has set the protective stakes wider than necessary. He seeks to turn a right into an obligation. He believes that without intent indifference the right and opportunity to indifference will be lost. Again — that's only a problem if one believes that inutility bestows a value that utility destroys.

Since I don't think it does, I come to my second point: that the humanities are not in danger.

The proportion of tenure track faculty to adjuncts and graduate instructors is changing. Universities are bigger and more inclusive than they used to be. Our population has grown and a greater percentage of citizens is getting a university education. Small seminars in padded chairs are reserved for a small and dedicated group of teachers and students.

This change in proportion doesn't signal an extinction, just a wider demographic within the ivory tower's blast zone. And while those groups used to have more of the campus to themselves, they now have to share the quad. But no one is telling them to leave. This is only a problem for future Professors Fish if they insist on being the only game in town. And if they're determined to be useless there's no reason to lament their replacement by people who do gorgeous work and don't mind if it serves a purpose greater than itself.

---

I've changed a line in this post: In calling aesthetics that avoid apologetics a fine pursuit, I seem to contradict my criticism of Fish's agenda. Avoid implies more intention I meant to indicate. I changed the line to aesthetics that survive without apologetics. Still, it's not the best line.

Just give me a reason

A short bit ago Mr. Verb mentioned Susan Jacoby's claim that linguists are to blame for the current plague of anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.

Not long after that I saw her on C-SPAN talking to Nick Gillespie for an hour.

I was waiting for her to start her argument but all she did was complain without reasoning her way to any conclusion. Along the way she tosses around premises and definitions that Gillespie challenges without pursuing them. Her views are full of contradictions.

She says that fundamentalism is a source of anti-rationalism granting that religion doesn't preclude a belief in evolution even tho it would preclude it for her. How does that work? If she doesn't think it's a necessary belief why would it be for her? But that's beside the main point.

Gillespie (agreeing that there is a decline in reason?) asks her why she says this is a key moment in intellectual decline rather than just part of a cycle. She only offers the 24/7 scourge of "infotainment" without answering how that makes it a crucial point. After arguing that the non-stop news cycle is a poor medium she complains that people don't spend enough time with their sources of information. She argues that a newspaper is permanent and stays put so the reader can revisit it if necessary. But so is the TV. The internet even more so.

She claims there is proof that we don't know as much as we did in 1980 because books and newspapers aren't read. There is no way that we don't know as much and I doubt that such a cause could be shown. Just how is any amount of information measured? Is this counting information such as computer skills and familiarity with technology? Is there some tally of the recognition of faces? Are politicians' faces worth more intelligence points than actors' and athletes'? What about statistics? Don't all sports fans have more data to memorize with each passing season?

When Jacoby objects that so much on the internet is junk Gillespie interjects that you could say that about books. She doesn't respond but continues with her point that people are watching junk. Then she backs up saying that the problem isn't just that people are watching TV or are on the internet. The problem is that it's all they do. She's jumping away from her argument that people only use it dabblingly -- and she agrees that's also a problem with books: if it's all you do it's a problem. But then why is she saying only that TV/internet is a problem. She agrees that it's a tool. But she hasn't argued that it is bringing about any result other than that people are not reading books. Another tool.

Gillespie poses the most important question. How can her claims be quantified? He rightly doubts that it can be measured by the number of books read. He believes for instance that people are more skeptical of leadership. Surely that's a good indication.

Her counter offers no rational argument or reason: "It seems to me we are not living in the same universe."

He cites other indicators: the decline of party affiliation as evidence of independent thought: bestseller lists showing "niche" discrimination.

Nowhere does she give a definition of intellectualism. No explanation of how it is measured. More importantly she can't even explain what would be measured.

She makes the undeveloped unsupported and unevaluated claim that there are things that "we all need to know" for some reason. She hasn't given a reason. This view has been out there for a long time but I'm still waiting for someone to give me a reason to buy it.

Then she jumps into that favorite mud pit of elitists -- colloquial language as an indication of intellectual poverty. She closes with this gem.

When you listen even to the way people speak I don't see how you can talk about us having reasonable discourse. I say this and I'll say it here: the word folks embodies -- which you haven't used once -- embodies everything I hate. No presidential speech before 1980 ever used that word. Imagine: We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain.

On 6 December 1904 in his Fourth Annual Message to the Senate and House of Representatives Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

Others, living in more remote regions, primitive, simple hunters and fisher folk, who know only the life of the woods and the waters, are daily being confronted with twentieth-century civilization with all of its complexities.

OK. So this State of the Union Address was actually written and submitted to congress rather than delivered as a speech. And Roosevelt says folk not folks. But Jacoby's point is just as ridiculous either way.

Her entire argument is maddening because of its vapid presumptions. She's making the old and familiar arguments that a canon of knowledge and the method of investigating it has been determined and must be protected -- but apparently she doesn't care to defend it rationally. The only argument she can come up with against the subject matter of the material in a class on the horror genre is that the movies are "crap". She hasn't defined crap but from hearing the views spewing out of her mouth I think she must assume we can all taste it too.

Getting your turds wisted

Some of the most offensive jokes I know use an implied spoonerism as the punchline. Certain answers to the question 'What's the different between X and Y' easily evoke the same phrase with some inverted onsets. Especially when the words in the punchline aren't too common or are similar to conspicuously offensive words.

And the relative frequency of spoonerisms as a speech error is good evidence that word sounds are organised in a manner that makes onset inversion one of the easier switches.

But similar sounds can easily invert even if one an onset and the other is a coda. Even if the syllable onset is word internal.

In the office the other day Ed our renaissance scholar was admitting the daunting task of submitting writing to our esteemed professors. One professor--last name Ross--is known for speaking his mind and not suffering foolishness. "I definitely feel the presure...pressure with Ross. I do feel the presure."

Buffy looked over at me. I looked up at her. "You're going into his blog" she announced to Ed.

I've chosen "presure" to represent his pronunciation with the alveolar [s] instead of the postalveolar fricative [ʃ]. I was sad to hear that he didn't actually flip the [s] and [ʃ]. He caught himself before he completed the phrase--corrected the pronunciation of pressure--and proceeded to say "Ross" instead of "Rosh" as I was hoping to hear.

But when I told him that he paused and suggested that he might have in fact said "Rosh."

"No" I assured him. "I was hoping you would."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I was disappointed when I heard you pronounce the [s]."

But he did offer another interesting error. When he repeated pressure it flipped back to the alveolar fricative.

That leads me to the following mysteries:

It's not clear that the first [s] was a result of switched segments. He corrected himself and perhaps it was regressive assimilation (over a long distance) from the [s] in Ross. Maybe he was never going to say Rosh. That's not as fun.

The [s] in the last performance of pressure didn't precede an occurrence of Ross--so progressive assimilation from the already pronounced "Ross" is likely. But it's more exciting to think that it was a partially realized inversion--the other half of which was never going to be pronounced. If so then even tho the second "Ross" wasn't going to make it to performance it was still part of the organization and structure of his sentence. And we saw its ghost by the appearance of the coda [s] in the 2nd syllable onset when he said "presure" [pɻɛsɹ̩ ] instead of "pressure" [pɻɛʃɹ̩ ].

An inversion through phonemic haunting perhaps?

_

Taking a break from summer

Today is the first day of classes. Posting may now be a little lighter than the summer blitz. Several new officemates have wriggled their way into 215 and I've been told that 2 of them are linguists. Odd that everyone assumes that's important to me. Have you met LING₁? Have you met LING₂? Yeah we told them about you too!

And it's not just for linguistics. All fields get the same reaction. Oh you're a medievalist! Have you met...? I've never been a very compartmentalized person. I like to blend the colours of my life to a nice neutral tone instead of a sharp plaid pattern. Well let's say the pattern is so tightly woven that although the threads retain distinct colors they appear (at not much of a distance) a rich umber.

Of course the linguists will blend in fine.

Tomorrow I meet with the history of the English language class (327). It's going to be a new experience. So far all classes I have taught here at Purdue have had a heavy cant towards engineering. So far the roster shows that all 29 students in 327 are enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts. This could be fun.

All of a sudden the fabric of my class loses the steely-blue tint of math and engineering; it takes on the earthy tone of a leather-bound tome. Of wooden bookcases gilded by thumbprints and coffee.

What's that Mistert Colbert?

Last evening we had several friends over representing the academic fields of renaissance medieval comparative and classic literature; Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, Old English and Old Saxon, linguistics and math. We spent the evening playing a board game and watching Ali-G on YouTube.

We took some time to watch Dave's videos as well. (Be sure to watch this one. I was particularly amused and pleased to learn that the football players at the end of the video had no idea what was going on. They were just heading out for a game and Dave jumped in to do his guerrilla filming.)

I found myself revealing my social ineptness when in the midst of several humorous stories about family, former students, odd professors, horrible bosses, funny movies, and dog-sitting I was carried away by a usage in one friend's story. She was reporting some of the misspellings she has encountered in her job as a tutor. In one paper a student wrote of 'robberts' 'gangsterts' and 'mobsterts'.

I don't know what anyone said for about 75 seconds after that. I kept going over those 3 words in my mind. My lips were moving and Buffy rolled her eyes when she looked over at me. She knows I have a happy little land in my mind full of shiny sounds and metallic IPA symbols happily flashing in the [sʌn].

"'robberts' 'gangsterts' 'mobsterts' 'robberts' 'gangsterts' 'mobsterts'..."

Why would this student spell and say all three of these words this way? Google™ shows 737 results for "gangstert" 179 results for "mobstert" (but very few English results, one of which is this same friend telling the story in the comments section on another blog) 1.4 millions hits for 'robbert'. But it's mostly a proper name and no relevant results that I could find. So I searched for "cops and robberts" and I got 9 hits.

This is a weak trend to be sure. But there's something happening here. Whether we can find the trend spreading or we have only this one student's usage the grouping of three makes me wonder what's behind this extra 'T' even if just in her idiolect.

I've come up four suggestions and I'm not sure how much laughter to stifle as I offer them.

Reduplicative metathesis: Two of these three words show a chiasmus or metathesized reduplication. The intrusive [t] turns [-stɻz] into [-stɻts]. Has 'robber' undergone the same process by analogy of related terms? But this does not work as elegantly if the singular also gets the final [t].

Voiceless plural morpheme after liquid: the plural morpheme [z] that we hear on words like bear bull and car is in some dialects sounding more like [s]. This is the same as saying the plural of whore exactly like horse. Might this voiceless alveolar fricative prime the environment for an intrusive voiceless stop in these words?

Corruption by another criminal -ert: Is it possible that the ending of pervert/s has influenced these three -er criminal words?

Hyper-correction by influence of Comedy Central: This is my favorite possibility. Stephen Colbert has allowed the silent 'T' in his name to corrupt his pronunciation of "report" in his show's title The Colbert Report: the "Colbare Repore" (if you will). For all I know this student only wrote the 'T' and she might not actually pronounce it. She might simply be following Stephen's lead.

Intellectual naked dreams

Calling all linguists. The news has been going around for a while and I just saw it mentioned by Mr. Verb that the glottopedia project is ready and willing to host your expertise. I'm excited about this as both a consumer and a possible contributor.

Right now I'm mostly interested as a consumer. It's a nice list of topics and terms that can keep me in line regarding my studies. I'll probably use it to make sure I can hold a conversation about every heading on the page. It's a good list of terms even before any entries are put up. And watching the entries develop is a good way to keep questioning all claims and holding every fact to a standard of evidence and arguability. Arguablness? Arguabilation? Adequatitude?

As a possible contributor my goal would be to achieve the next level of familiarity and competence at which I would feel comfortable making judgments about a comprehensive and representative discussion on each topic; then subjecting those judgments for the approval of the experts.

The internets have added a wonderful level of accountability to all arguments. Even a squeaky-voiced railer like me can't get away with false witness and specious logic.

Summer of corruption

[Read more about the blogging syllabus here.]

I have been teaching for the last 10 years. In all that time I still haven't learned to value of daily lesson plans and or units or syllabuses. Some students respond well to this and stick around asking questions because they get the impression that I'm willing to answer/guide/research or otherwise accompany them on the path of learning (you can roll your eyes).

This also means that several students are ignored and learn very little.

So we got our evaluations back the other day and they're about what I expected. The online format yielded more honest results than the evaluations of past semesters. What interests me are the comments.

Here are three of them:

• While the instructor was friendly and laid back, there was no clear syllabus to follow. I feel that I didn't expand any of my reading or writing skills in this class.


• He is one of the best professors I have had. He really cares about us students. He wants us to really learn and do good in the class.


• I could only hope that Purdue University is lucky enough to have individuals as exceptional as Michael Covarrubias for teachers or professors for the rest of the University's existence.

Sounds about right.

Next term I get to teach a 108 (Advanced Composition) instead of a 106 (Intro Composition). Some friends and I will be joining forces and using contributor blogs as a composition forum. I'd like to take some credit for coming up with the idea. I don't know if I'll get any.

But more importantly I've been given a 327: History of the English Language. This is what I've been hoping for. I have some planning to do over the summer. This will be alongside the sound change research I have to continue as I prepare for my prelim papers.

My reading for the summer will be focused on Labov. Specifically the first two volumes (Internal Factors and Social Factors) of his Patterns of Linguistic Change series. James Milroy will also get my attention. The ELL prelim examinations allow me to write 4 papers, each focusing on a different area. The 3 required areas are Syntax Phonology and Semantics. I'll try to get Historical in there for the 4th. My hub topic is going to be prescriptivism and its ability to sublimate or change the UR of a phonetic form. My main question will investigage the evidence of URs that have disappeared in some dialects and the possibility of either resurfacing or being spontaneously introduced into other (sometimes later) dialects.

Rearranging links [updated (thrice)]

In just the last week I've learned of four more blogs being written by the friendly folk of Heavilon Hall. Casey restarted his posting and now Jon, Dave, and Anna have plugged into the current. I've reorganized my links to provide a sanctuary of all blogs Purdue. The foci vary as all well-nourished academic discourses should.

Buffy (PhD Comparative and Renaissance Literature) likes to make fun of herself as an academic (and no-one deserves the ridicule less).

Casey (PhD American Literature) tries to focus on existential truths while lamenting that they have no easily discernible edges that assure us of their place.

Brian (MFA Poetry) looks at poetry and art while making fun of Casey and dreaming of Wallace Stevens.

Marc (PhD Rhetoric and Composition) focuses on technology and rhetoric (or is that rhetoric and technology? Which one "works" better Marc?).

Anna (MFA Poetry) has just started blogging and she promises to write about more than celebrities (should she have to?).

Dave (MFA Poetry) paints the life of a poet who does much more than just talk about and write poetry.

Jon (MFA Fiction) proves that he loves reading contemporary fiction and is able to contribute. Read him to keep up with what's out there now.

Sycamore Review is Purdue's literary journal.

Mark (PhD American Literature? nee MFA Fiction) has his blog set up and will start posting soon. I'm only assuming he'll make it interesting. He can be a jerk.

My name is Michael.

[Update:
Two more blogs to add to the list.
Monica (PhD Jewish Literature and Philosophy) tackles and considers the philosophies and words and people and actions that seek everything spanning the power and grace between Good and Evil. (look for her contributions over at Jewcy too.)

Rebekah (MFA Poetry) gathers all sorts of materials and constructs all sorts of things. She kindly provides lots of pictures (when you're talking about a poet "images" can mean too many things) to document her work.

[Update2:
We're like a flock of Hitchockian birds. We just keep comin' atcha.

Monica (MA Comparative Literature) provides an alternative to Garp's world view. West Lafayette will soon be in her rearview mirror.

Dave (MA English Language and Linguistics) and his fellow contributors offer stories and theories on grilling fuel, audiology experiments, graduate school, movie wizards, political conservatism and marathon walks. And sometimes they branch out.

Eric (MFA Poetry) is using a new blog to take us along as he uses Markov chains to create poetry. His old blog is still going along, becoming a "more of a personal type blog."

Theresa/Tess (MFA Poetry) provides her own introduction. Of one blog she says "[it] is extremely poetry-ish (I post a fabulous, my-choice-but-not-my-work poem a day on it, plus extras)." She picks good poems so go read them. Of the other she says "[it] will only interest you if you happen to know and like me." Hers are young blogs. Give them some nurturing attention.
[Update3:
Everytime I think I'm out...
Chad (MFA Poetry) plans to post a new poem regularly and he invites all "to read along."
]
]
]

Its Knot Necessarily Sew

The claim that phonetics and semantics are not related is of course too absolute for me to defend. So we explain what we believe can be inferred about one from the other. The examples in the last post moved in the direction of certain semantics to their likely phonetic forms. Yes this is a relationship. Let me admit that from the start and move on. I then use the term necessary relationship and claim that there is no prescriptive or proscriptive force from one segment to the other. Although there are apparent correlations between words about relative size and the vowels in those words most will agree that a words need not based their meaning on their vowels. And to support this they could counter the claim that a stressed vowel in a diminutive word can certainly be a back vowel as in "puny."

If a contrary voice suggests that "puny" does have a +high initial segment (either [i] or [j]) in its stressed diphthong [ju], "huge" [hjudʒ] serves as a counter example. That can be countered by the additive argument: "puny" has an unstressed high segment in the second syllable that 'adds' to its diminutive tone. It's getting ridiculous already. There is no reason "puny" must mean "small." And although the direction of implication can make a supportable claim about what vowels are likely to be stressed in words with certain semantic intensions it is unreasonable to expect that on hearing the phonetic or phonological form in an unknown language anyone could synthesize its semantics.

And for some this is an unbearable lightness. Buffy looks at my white board covered with formulae and the corresponding sets and symbols and all forms of data and its grids and she flashes back to her math classes. She is now fully immersed in the dense and philosophical literature of the renaissance and she doesn't always share my interest in the IPA. The patterns I'm identifying are semantically empty and she has questioned how I was able to leave behind my literary degrees and move over to phonology. We've moved in opposite directions. I can say nothing of her motives and her reasons for following her math degree with literature--but I left literature and moved over to phonology largely because I enjoy a field that is often unapologetically only about itself. I find phonology to be a largely self-absorbed field and I love it for that.

There are of course many in the field who apply their learning and theories to early childhood language acquisition and even some who focus on theraputic applications. And that's a wonderful focus. I've said so before. But I came into the field because I spent several years telling high school aged students that success in my English classes was not going to guarantee success anywhere in their future, and failure would not guarantee failure anywhere else. Then why try? they asked. Why indeed. And so I moved into a culture that loves and trusts itself for its own sake. Such is academia. It's such a joy to read an essay that deals with expletives taboos and other offensive forms with spartan pointedness. No asterisks or &!@#ing euphemisms. (I'm not talking about the words themselves here so I don't need to use them.) While others are claiming that a word must be banned, linguists are assuming that it is possible to separate an offensive word from the hatred that often propels it. Separating a form from its meaning is my little reminder that basic investigation is a reasonable goal.