It’s really a problem of journalism itself

by on October 17th, 2010

I woke up this morning to discover that the NY Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane, had responded to the objections I had raised in my post about how Guy Deutscher’s article looked a lot like Lera Boroditsky’s.

The problem here, I conclude, is not one of intellectual theft. It’s really a problem of journalism itself.

The rules of attribution and credit in the domain of scholarship are established, strict and well-understood. Journalism, by contrast, lacks a formal code for citing scholarly work. When scholarly subject matter traverses the border into popular journalism, it simply isn’t clear how much attribution is enough.

That was pretty much the stance I took in my initial blog post as well. But Guy Deutscher takes a more aggressive stance, accusing Arthur Brisbane of misrepresenting Michael Silverstein’s stated position:
The way he paraphrased Mr. Silverstein’s response can easily be construed as giving at least partial credence to Ms. Boroditsky’s claims to important contributions that I should have cited instead of or alongside the seminal ones I named. I asked Mr. Silverstein what he had actually said, and it turns out to have been the opposite. He had described Ms. Boroditsky’s examples as “in essence reproducing others’ results long in the literature.” Mr. Brisbane chose not to mention that.The way he paraphrased Mr. Silverstein’s response can easily be construed as giving at least partial credence to Ms. Boroditsky’s claims to important contributions that I should have cited instead of or alongside the seminal ones I named. I asked Mr. Silverstein what he had actually said, and it turns out to have been the opposite. He had described Ms. Boroditsky’s examples as “in essence reproducing others’ results long in the literature.” Mr. Brisbane chose not to mention that.
No hard feelings though, since he also says that “Ms. Boroditsky is one of the many who are specifically credited and praised in the book, and two of her experiments are described there in detail.”
There are also some letters posted on the NY Times website, and some discussion over at Language Log.
I should also mention that Guy Deutscher responded to Kathryn Woolard’s initial post on the Society for Linguistic Anthropology blog:
In the book I make even stronger criticisms of Whorf’s argumentation and his representation of linguistic facts. But as opposed to the article, these criticisms are made in context, and are discussed with relation to particular examples that Whorf used and quotation from Whorf’s work, e.g. his claims about the alleged timelessness of the Hopi language and its alleged influence on the Hopi’s inability to understand the concept of time as we know it. I don’t think I caricaturized his position – I’m afraid he doesn’t need much caricaturizing there.
It seems that if we just read Guy Deutscher’s book, as opposed to his journalism, all doubts will be erased. Is there any hope for public intellectuals in the news media?

P. Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim on Twitter.

From Academia, In the Press, Language

2 Comments →
  1. seth edenbaum permalink

    I’m not very interested in turf wars but this struck me as important. From Deutscher’s comment at the LA blog:

    I had no intention whatsoever of characterizing linguistic anthropology as the loony fringe of disrepute. I very much value the work done in this field. Indeed, much of the book from which this article was excerpted deals with central questions of linguistic anthropology, such as colour. What I meant was completely different, namely that for most linguists who consider themselves in the mainstream, and certainly for cognitive scientists, the influence of language on thought is nowadays almost a taboo subject, and any attempts to explore it are rejected out of hand.

    This goes to the heart of the disconnect between anthropology and various technocratic neoliberalisms of the academy, manifest on the web sites like Crooked Timber, and in most economics, philosophy, and political science blogs.

    Consciousness is cultural. But even here I’ve had a hard time pointing out what I assumed anthropologists took it for granted, especially when asking about the the graphing of culture in the context of the culture of graphing.

    This is all an aside, so I’ll leave it at that.

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  2. Christine permalink

    Kerim, I see great hope for public intellect in the response to your own and Kathryns’ posts. Journalism and self-serving scholarship certainly aren’t joining the dodo anytime soon – calling attention to poor practices is the all-important first step, but how often does the critique of academics actually gain the attention of the NYT?

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