Hey Interesting Topic, What ’s Your Name?

I want to propose the embrace of an ugly word:logogenology (low-go-jen-ahl-oh-gee). It comes from three Greek words,logos [word],gennesi [birth], andlogia [study of], and it names the study of language origins. In other words, it refers to this blog ’s beat.Normally I dislike academic coinages, but in this case I think we need to recognize that there is a community of scholars who began in many fields —e.g., linguistics, literature, biology, psychology, archaeology, and anthropology—who share common questions and are interested in one another’s results. Thus a biologist might learn from a linguist and come to a conclusion that is of more interest to that biologist than to most linguists. In stead of identifying themselves as biologists and linguists, it might be better to focus on their shared community and say , “I’m a logogenologist,” even if one has to add, “That’s somebody who studies language origins.”I have come to this position after reading an interesting paper by two people calling themselves anthropologists, Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis. The paper is titled “Wild Voices” and is published inCurrent Anthropology. They begin their essay, “Anthropology is the study of what it means to be human. So it must be at least part of our job to explain why it is that out of 220 primate species, only humans talk.” The authors seem to be claiming that explaining speech is a part of anthropology, but they concede immediately that their accou nt of langu...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: blogs