**** Debate between substrate and univeral positions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UP: <?????????> What would happen if sociolinguists applied their methodology to Pidgin and creole studies?
Bickerton's work has been shunned or rejected by most pidgin and creole scholars. It has found more acceptance among cognitive scientists and theoretical linguists. {<[LINK]> -- Jackendoff, Review in NYT Rev of Bks, Beh. and Br sci forum} Besides creolists: anthropologists, sociologist and historians have been among the least receptive to B's ideas. Joyner ignores, Gwendoly Hall rejects, Jourdain dismaisses, (latter two accept Holm as unproblematic), Goodman dismisses with faulty historical arguments, Mufwene turns a theory into an assertion,...{<[LINK]> -- get sources--perhaps insert hypertext summaries of each argument after my assertions}
Perhaps much of the resistance is sociohistoric in its origin, an irony lost on the socio-centric. The strong version of Bickerton's hypothesis, which he does not even hold in hypothetical form, much less assert as truth {<[LINK]>--give examples} holds the possibility of bio-determinism. This broad concept has had a particularly nasty history, ranging from hierasrchalizing of races classes and genders to justifications of eugenics and genocide in the contexts of Nazi Germany, Western
European colonialism and North American extermination and systems of exclusion and privilege. Social scientists have constructed Bickerton's appplication and provisional testing of Chomsky's theoretical positions as rank bio-determinism, as such dismissing it out of hand, often on the basis of scurrilous historico- statistical grounds.
The sociological context of a field full of scholars knocking down an effigy of their opponent, who has in the meantime ceased to engage in the bouts and moved to the grandstands of the particular arena, has its own implications, too long unexamined. If Bickerton's theory is so easily dismissed, why must it be done with such virulence and so often and in such a distorted a manner as to result in the author's withdrawal from the discussion? Perhaps it is the vehemence with which Bickerton stated his position, especially the unfortunate ressurection of one of Robert Hall's terms, _substratomaniac_, as a descriptor of that to which he was offering an alternative vision. Hall's label is invoked more often than Bickerton's vision, which has largely been inverted to ad hominem attacks on its author in the guise of scholarship. {<[LINK]> --get WMQ quotes for this}
If the withdrawal signifies defeat, why are so many current works concerned with flogging the corpse? Why have not people working in other disciplines noticed that they are employing a dead letter to such good effect? What is the sociological analysis of a game in which one team has left the field and the other team keeps playing? Perhaps it could be explained by invoking universals of good sense.