We quest for a grail of illusive perfection

I no longer regret joining the Linguist List. Recently a rather fiery discussion erupted concerning a review of the book Chomsky's Minimalism.

The main bone of contention was about whether semantics can come after syntax, i.e. whether the human mind creates syntactical structures first and infers the semantics from them only when reading or hearing them.

Personally I believe syntax and semantics are intertwined from the start, but I'm not really one to comment on the issue with any deep insight.

Be that as it may, it's always exciting to see linguists go ballistic. Most of the time, what linguists write in research papers and books is fairly dry.

It's not because the authors can't write in an interesting way. It's simply that it's practically impossible to use colourful language in linguistics without becoming too obscure. Not to mention that in all likeness you'd end up being frowned upon for not taking things seriously enough.

As in this case, the discussion got heated because someone not too informed in the field was stating their opinions a tad too strongly, not disrespectfully but somewhere along the way.

So of course people get insulted and they retort. Whoever started it will as a result get insulted back, because their pride is at stake. It isn't easy for anyone to admit that they're in the wrong and then apologise.

I sympathise and hope that I'll never be in that position. It's not likely, since I rarely feel the need to persuade other people to see things my way, let alone to inform them voluntarily about my opinions.

This incident reminded me of when I was doing background reading on my thesis. I found a couple of articles back from the 1970s where two authors exchanged extremely caustic language in a couple of issues of a linguistics journal. I recall someone referring to this exchange as some kind of "wars", I wish I could remember the exact term.

It was like reading an exciting story, biting your lip as you read on to see what the other person will have to say next about some particularly hurtful choice of term on the other's part. I shouldn't have fun at the expense of somebody else's hurt feelings, but I did.

It was such a rare, precious discussion because it had gotten so personal. Again, I hope no one will ever start throwing dirt on anything I might publish one day. Of course you shouldn't take it personally when the criticism is matter-of-fact and doesn't attack your person, but usually that's impossible.

I know that even very experienced linguists take criticism personally, even though rationally they know they shouldn't when it hasn't been intended as personal in any way. Especially if someone is questioning your competence in your own field, how could you not take insult. Just human nature I suppose.

It's a fine line to tread in general, making a text interesting and accessible while trying to remain scientific, accurate and credible enough. I think it can be done, however. One of my ambitions with my dissertation (the topic of which I haven't even chosen yet) is to make the text much less dry than in my thesis.

I truly believe that blogging has helped me improve my English. It gives an effortless opportunity and a reason to write more than I normally would.

What's more, my blogs are the only place I get to use less formal English. I think I'm on my way to finding that golden middle road to travel when writing matter-of-fact, yet lively language.