On Tue, 5 Aug 1997, Jean Murphy wrote:
 
> I wonder if Johanna or any of you might have a recommendation for a good
> journal that can keep us up to date on movements in linguistics.  It had
> been 13 years since my graduate work, and I found I had lots of catching
> up to do.  I'm convinced that the disciplines of English and Linguistics
> need to work together for us to accomplish anything.
>
I couldn't agree more with Jeanie on this last sentence. As to journals,
however, I'm afraid the picture is a little discouraging. Speaking as
someone recently emerged from a Ph.D. program in theoretical linguistics,
I can say that linguistics journals such as _Language_, _Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory_, _Linguistic Inquiry_, _Functions of
Language_ and _Cognitive Linguistics_ would be inaccessible to highly
educated people in other fields, because linguistics has been around long
enough (and gazing at its own navel long enough) to develop arcane insider
jargon and to assume in readers extensive knowledge of current theoretical
assumptions. I mean, I have trouble reading stuff in these journals if it
is outside of the immediate areas in which I have had training.
 
If anyone out there can contradict this, I would be most happy to hear it!
 
There is a journal I keep getting ads for called 'Journal of English
Linguistics' (Sage is the publisher). It looks very diverse and
interesting -- covering areas from dialectology to syntax to history to
usage and more. If it is so broad in coverage, I would expect that it
would style itself for the more general reader. If anyone has experience
of this journal, let us know how accessible it is to non-linguists.
 
I think perhaps another alternative would be to do some reading of recent
books that are designed to explain current linguistics and its discoveries
to the non-linguist, such as Steve Pinker's 'The Language Instinct'; a
little book I discovered recently called 'Everyday conversation'; Walt
Wolfram and Donna Christian's really informative yet highly accessible
'Dialects and Education' --- I suppose I could compile a little list.
 
A lot of textbook writers do a very creditable job of mixing in pretty
current linguistics (although extreme caution with regard to the syntactic
theories they describe is in order; syntactic theory has gone into the
stratosphere since transformationalism), such as Jeffrey Kaplan and Martha
Kolln.
 
If there are other linguists out there subscribing to this list, please
chime in and help me out.
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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