First, no commentator in this venue is an leading researcher in sociology or anthropology, so anything said is incredibly weak evidence for your strong claim that researchers / academics “who are currently in [those fields] are more interested in pursuing a political agenda than truth seeking.”
FWIW, I recently saw the thesis talks of a few graduands in social psychology, and they seemed to me qualitatively different from those of physicists: in the former, the professor who introduces the graduand to the audience will spew out lots of applause lights (e.g. “Ms So-and-so is going to speak about $topic, which is such a big problem nowadays that affects so many people”), professors will occasionally interrupt the graduand with comments like “yes, this is a great idea, I hope to see more of this in the next years”, and after the talk they will ask stuff like “why did you choose this particular topic” (trying to elicit applause lights from the graduand themselves); in the latter, the introduction will be limited to “Mr So-and-so is going to speak about $topic”, full stop (even when they could in principle mention how graphene is such a revolutionary material or whatever—they just don’t), no-one will interrupt the graduand unless they say something unclear, questions at the end will be strictly technical (or occasionally “what applications can this have”), and there are hardly any applause lights except trivial ones such as “thank you for your attention”.
BTW, while I’m not familiar with linguistics except through the internet, ISTM that it is seen as a hard science (for the purposes of what’s being discussed in this subthread) by insiders but as a soft science by most outsiders, and as a result once in a while a non-linguist will be disappointed when a linguist refuses to espouse boo lights about non-standard language usage (e.g.).
Just to confirm: you’re proposing that when linguists refuse to condemn non-standard language usage, that’s an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights, rather than an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage?
Not quite—more like, what the linguists say is “an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage”, but what the non-linguists asked them and what they will think when they hear the answer is “an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights” to some extent—but for some reason I don’t terribly like this way of putting it.
WRT the second quote… in what way do you dislike it? E.g., does it seem that I’ve factually misrepresented the position, or that I’ve framed it negatively, or...?
FWIW, I recently saw the thesis talks of a few graduands in social psychology, and they seemed to me qualitatively different from those of physicists: in the former, the professor who introduces the graduand to the audience will spew out lots of applause lights (e.g. “Ms So-and-so is going to speak about $topic, which is such a big problem nowadays that affects so many people”), professors will occasionally interrupt the graduand with comments like “yes, this is a great idea, I hope to see more of this in the next years”, and after the talk they will ask stuff like “why did you choose this particular topic” (trying to elicit applause lights from the graduand themselves); in the latter, the introduction will be limited to “Mr So-and-so is going to speak about $topic”, full stop (even when they could in principle mention how graphene is such a revolutionary material or whatever—they just don’t), no-one will interrupt the graduand unless they say something unclear, questions at the end will be strictly technical (or occasionally “what applications can this have”), and there are hardly any applause lights except trivial ones such as “thank you for your attention”.
BTW, while I’m not familiar with linguistics except through the internet, ISTM that it is seen as a hard science (for the purposes of what’s being discussed in this subthread) by insiders but as a soft science by most outsiders, and as a result once in a while a non-linguist will be disappointed when a linguist refuses to espouse boo lights about non-standard language usage (e.g.).
Just to confirm: you’re proposing that when linguists refuse to condemn non-standard language usage, that’s an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights, rather than an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage?
Not quite—more like, what the linguists say is “an expression of linguists not negatively valuing non-standard language usage”, but what the non-linguists asked them and what they will think when they hear the answer is “an expression of different cultural norms between the hard-science and soft-science communities regarding the use of boo-lights” to some extent—but for some reason I don’t terribly like this way of putting it.
Ah, OK. Thanks for clarifying.
WRT the second quote… in what way do you dislike it? E.g., does it seem that I’ve factually misrepresented the position, or that I’ve framed it negatively, or...?
Weird… On reading it again it no longer sounds that bad to me, and I can’t quite remember why it did.
If you have any insights as to what caused either the initial reaction or its termination, I’m interested.
I think I might have been primed to think of the phrase “boo light” as a boo light. My inner Hofstadter is laughing.