Re: Responding to a challenge

From: Zobby (zobby_at_zobby.com)
Date: 07/26/04 

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:21:11 -0400

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:19:24 -0500, Raymond S. Wise wrote:

> "Zobby" <zobby@zobby.com> wrote in message
>>
>> Yes, I accused you of being pseudo-scientific and writing for propaganda
>> purposes. After reading this last message, I accuse you also of being
>> dishonest.
>>
>> *Of course* I had in mind your advocacy of Esperanto. The thread was
> called
>> "langue internationale" and the topic was Esperanto. What else could I
> have
>> had in mind?
>
>
> For the record: I was guessing that you believed me to be propagandizing on
> behalf of Esperanto, but I had doubts that that was what you had in mind
> when you mentioned propagandizing. There are other types of propagandizing.
> For example, I might agree politically with John McWhorter and be advocating
> his nonpolitical ideas out of respect for him. (I'm not. I have no real idea
> what those political beliefs might be.) I might just admire the book *The
> Power of Babel* and be advocating it. (It's true that I admire the book. But
> I quoted from it because it is a handy source of the ideas, which I did
> *not* get solely from McWhorter.) Or you might have had something else in
> mind. Since I did not know, I expressed doubt.

Ok. I thought the context was pretty clear, but I accept that McWhorter's
controversial political stance could have been the object of my comment.

I was hoping you'd be on the record for something else, though. Did you or
did you not intend your list of 20 points as a list of items I disagreed
with in fr.lettres.langue.anglaise?

> You can accuse me of being misguided. You can accuse me of being foolish.
> You can accuse me of being stupid, even. But when you accuse me of being
> dishonest, you go too far.

I never thought you were stupid. I thought you may have been mislead by a
few books, but as the thread progressed I had to discard this hypothesis.

What prompted me to respond to your original message was your repeated
appeal to the authority of linguists, to the authority of the many books
you have read, etc... when, unfortunately, it became apparent (to me) that
you had only read a few books and that you had never paid any attention to
the zillion threads on sci.lang (a newsgroup I know you read) on the
subject. In fact, a similar thread on sci.lang was slowly dying at the time
we were starting our discussion on fr.l.l.anglaise. At least one linguistic
professor participated to that thread and his conclusions were opposed to
yours.

In particular, I wondered why you would say that the consensus among
linguists is that creoles have a "simplicity of form compared with older
languages" (my translation). You couldn't possibly make such an assertion
if you had done any research on the subject. Unless, of course, you were
being deliberately misleading.

My suspicions grew stronger when you later claimed that I hadn't understood
McWhorter's opinion on the simplicity of languages, when I had in fact
never mentioned anything about it. I don't know what McWhorter thinks about
simplicity (I assume that he believes some languages to be more complex
than others only because this is how you represented his ideas). I had only
said that he wasn't a good representative of the linguistic community, and
it is the opinion I repeated and clarified on flla.

But none of these misleading and seemingly dishonest statements were enough
to make me call you a liar. What did it is the list of items you presented
to sci.lang claiming they were "points in dispute", including *again* (even
after my refutation on flla) a totally false description of my opinions or
statements about McWhorter.

That piece was particularly well crafted:

> [20] Finally, I pointed out to the poster who challenged me as being
> "pseudoscientific" that he was utterly wrong in believing that linguist John
> McWhorter, the author of *The Power of Babel: The Natural History of
> Languages,* thinks that languages which are simple in form are "inferior."

You had indeed pointed this out to me, but I had never claimed it in the
first place. So, technically, the statement isn't a lie. You did say that I
was wrong in believing X. I simply never believed, nor claimed to believe,
X. On the contrary, I specifically refuted that allegation.

All of this looks to me like dishonesty, but you're right, I shouldn't have
accused you so bluntly. I regret it. My original intent was only to steer
you towards sci.lang where I thought the discussion was more relevant. I
knew I couldn't contribute anything substantial here and I didn't intend
to. I only responded to your messages (including this one) because I felt
you had misrepresented my opinions.

> *PLONK*

That's too bad. This marks the end of this discussion. I hope you've
learned something about language. I haven't.

Z.

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