Ideology, Politics, and Social Science Scholarship on the Responsibility of Intellectuals

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The 1990s have seen the publication of many books devoted to Language and Ideology (cf. Joseph & Taylor 1990. for one of the early ones) even though the term 'ideology' itself has remained ill-defined (Woolard 1998). The focus of attention has usually been placed on the particular use of language and often for some kind of 'political' ends, not on linguistic or other scholarship which might have been driven by some sort of ideology, i.e., a bundle of assumptions which themselves were taken as given. At least since Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism, it has been clear to everyone that scholars construct their conceptualization of things in line with their understanding of the cultural, social, and political world in which they live, and that this often unreflected 'pre-understanding' effects their view of cultures that are different from theirs and more often than not geographically and temporally distant from theirs. This recognition has had a sobering effect no doubt, and Said's book has long since become 'mainstream.' Much more disturbing to the scholarly profession has been the publication of Martin Bernal's Black Athena in 1987, since it went much further, going beyond accusations of colonialism and cultural bias, in suggesting that the Western representation of Classical Greece over the past two hundred years was false and that what had been accepted until now about occidental antiquity must now be seen derived from African-Asiatic cultures of the Near East, notably that of the Ancient Egyptians, and that no other than Socrates should be seen as black man. While we may understand the intellectual climate in the United States that led academics to present 'myth as history' (Lefkowitz 1996), it is obvious that lines of regular scholarly principles of investigation have been crossed (cf Lefkowitz & Rogers 1996). The present paper investigates what may be seen as the ideological underpinnings of such work. After reviewing some recent scholarship in the area of linguistic historiography that have shown that academic work has never been 'value-neutral' (as may have been assumed or has been claimed by some practitioners), it is argued that in effect one must be aware of what Clemens Knobloch has recently termed Resonanzbedarf, i.e., the desire, whether conscious or not, of scholars-and probably scientists, too-to have their work recognized by the educated public and that, in so doing, their discourses tend to pick up on contemporary popular notions. These efforts may be harmless if everyone was to recognize these allusions and adoption of certain lexical. items(buzz words) as props or what Germans call Versatzstiicke, but history tells us that this has not always been the case. Still, as Hutton (1999) has shown, not all scholarship during the Third Reich for example can simply be dismissed as worthless because it was conducted in under a prevailing political ideology. Indeed, in seemingly innocent times, linguists can be shown to frame their argument in a way that makes them appear so utterly superior to their predecessors (cf. Lawson 2001). Upon closer inspection, those discourses turn out to be much like those of scholars in nationalistic environments that have tended to select their 'facts' to prove a particular hypothesis (cf., e.g., Koerner 2001). The article argues for scholars to take a more active role in exploding myths, scientifically unfounded claims, and ideologically driven distortions, especially those that are socially and politically harmful.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. On defining 'ideology'
• 2. Has there been a National-Socialist linguistics?
• 3. Present-day instances of linguistic ideology and public politics
• 4. Explicating 'Resonanzbedarf'
• 5. Concluding remarks
• Works Cited
• abstract