IF SOCIOLINGUISTICS IS APPLIED, THEN WHAT IS THEORETICAL?

Joshua A. Fishman
Yeshiva University (emeritus) and Stanford University (visiting)
JoshuaAFishman@aol.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2003, 4:15-5:15 PM plenary
Room: Commonwealth South

Abstract
Academia is the main remaining unapologetic champion of "theory" in modern society. However, many scholars (and philosophers) have questioned the dichotomy between "theoretical" and "applied" (note Mahatma Gandhi and Kurt Lewin). Others questioned whether enough is known with any certainty, particularly in the social sciences, for any applications to be possible (note Wilhelm Wundt and Noam Chomsky). Finally, some have posited a sequential or feedback relationship between the two but have cautioned that any hard and fast boundary between them, as well as any set sequential direction between them, is dubious. Examples of research will be examined in connection with several of the above views. Although there are clearly sociolinguistic studies that deserve to be considered primarily one or the other, most reveal aspects or stages of both. The moral of this story: like many other societally based distinctions, this one shouldn't be pushed too far.

Biography
Joshua Fishman is Distinguished University Research Professor of Social Sciences at Yeshiva University (emeritus) and is currently a visiting professor and scholar at Stanford University. He also holds positions as an adjunct professor at New York University and the City University of New York Graduate Center. His biographical information is listed and regularly updated in most standard references, such as Who’s who in America, and he contributed an autobiographical essay entitled “My life through my work, my work through my life” to a volume First person singular (Konrad Koerner, Ed., Benjamins, 1991).

Within sociolinguistics, Fishman’s major interests include the study of language and ethnicity (including language and nationalism, religion, and language movements), language planning (including both corpus and status planning, the creation and revision of writing systems, and the organization and operation of language academies and agencies), Yiddish, bilingual education, and medical anthropology. His most recent books include the Handbook of language and ethnicity (paperback, Oxford, 2001), Can threatened languages be saved? (Multilingual Matters, 2000), The multilingual apple: Languages in New York (with Ofelia Garcia, Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), In praise of the beloved language (Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), Post-imperial English (Mouton de Gruyte, 1996), and Reversing language shift (Multilingual Matters, 1991).