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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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] ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~