Talk:John McWhorter/Archive 1

Archive 1

Vandalism on this page

I have edited or reverted a number of vandalisms by the anonymous user 68.81.125.26 for resorting to unmotivated deleting and hostile counter-claims in creolistics and John McWhorter. His IP might have to be blocked. Eklir (talk) 22:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleted some vandalism to this page. 72.129.0.10 (talk) 07:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Bio clean up

This article has been revised for its adherence to the policy on biographies of living persons. Anecdotal information and unsourced material have been removed. It has been rated a stub. The "unreferenced" template has been removed accordingly. Eklir (talk) 03:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Why are his political positions not mentioned?

He worked as a political commentator and has published books on race relations, but none of his views are mentioned in the article. Why not? The most important thing about a political commentator are his political views. With his record, it should be pretty easy to find citable references. AxelBoldt (talk) 18:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Relevance

McWhorter does not support reparations for slavery because he feels that black America was granted ample reparations in the late sixties. He is an outspoken critic of contemporary civil rights leaders. He has called Al Sharpton "quite simply an inveterate liar," and stated that "Jesse Jackson has no effect on the lives of most Black people." He stresses that race activism should be focused on improving the lives of poor blacks rather than on whether or not there is "racism," which he assumes will always be the case as it has always been in human history. He does not acknowledge that racism is beyond the color of ones skin, but ones nationality or origin.

Is this particularly relevant to the article? - FrancisTyers 22:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It certainly is because it outlines some of his views, which in turn impact his political work. —Sesel 20:40, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, lets assume that it is... it is certainly given undue weight compared to his work in linguistics, which is hardly covered here. Furthermore, the paragraph is not cited. - FrancisTyers 21:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Francis, It should be noted that his work in creolistics is highly controversial and politically biased and that he has contributed nothing to linguistics outside creolistics.

The same could be said of Derek Bickerton, but there's a lot more about linguistics on his page than on John's. 72.129.0.10 (talk) 10:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to put in my two cents on notability - McWhorter's linguistic work breaks new ground, while his political views are typical for a conservative and not very interesting, and the controversy surrounding them is similar to other well-known black conservatives and not that particular to McWhorter himself. The article should cover his linguistic work in detail, but his politics can be summarized and linked to the appropriate politics articles for more detail. --JWB (talk) 01:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that paragraph before bibliography needs at least a citation, otherwise a book review like that is clearly original research and not a neutral point of view. --shaggy Jan 17, 2008

Actually, McWhorter's views are unusual because he isn't a conservative. He has a reputation as one due to his views on race and his association with a conservative think tank, but if you actually look at what he has said he has almost never taken what might be regarded as a conservative position on issues other than race. You won't find him opposing abortion, advocating prayer in the public schools, opposing stem cell research, advocating faith-based programs, opposing sex education other than abstinence, or in general taking the positions of a social conservative. You won't find him pushing hard for reducing the role of government. He doesn't advocate "tort reform". He has said anything about how bad immigration is or advocated English as an official language. He isn't on record as supporting Bush on Guantanamo and the detention of "enemy combatants". Other than his views on race and situation of black people in the US, the only position that he has taken that might be considered conservative is his initial support for the invasion of Iraq. It is in fact extremely misleading to lump him in with (black) conservatives. And as the article now states, he supports Obama over McCain, hardly a conservative position. This article would be much improved by a more detailed and nuanced description of his political views, both since that is what he is probably best known for to the general public and because he occupies a sparsely occupied section of the political space.Bill (talk) 22:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The claim that his linguistic work is "biased and racist" is without foundation. He differs on some points from other linguists. That is normal. I know of no evidence whatever for characterizing his positions as "biased and racist".Bill (talk) 22:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the main point of contention is his calling some languages (especially creoles) "simple". As creoles tend to be spoken by non-Whites, this did ruffle some people's feathers. Especially if you consider on the other side of the debate are people who don't like creoles being classified as anything other than a normal language. Doing that, and then calling them "simple" will make those people upset. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.23.204.184 (talk) 02:24, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Leftist

In his TTC lectures "Story of Human Language" he says in the lecture 14 or 15 quote: "I AM NOT A LEFTIST", also he is obviously a senior fellow at a conservative think tank. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.161.146.190 (talk) 15:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

On "Conservative"

This was said before by another poster, and I will reiterate it - Mcwhorter cannot accurately be called a political "conservative." This statement presumes the word conservative is meant to include people who support small government intrusion in economic affairs but government regulation of morality. Consider the following examples:

1. Mcwhorter is in favor of ending the war on drugs, a typically liberal idea. 2. Mcwhorter voted for Obama and Kerry in the last two U.S. presidential elections. 3. Self-statements - Mcwhorter personally describes himself as a "moderate."

A perfect example of Mcwhorter's left-leaning writings, where he criticizes Glenn Beck and supports Van Jones:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/john-mcwhorter/dumping-van-jones-why-give-republicans-tantrum

Of course, on other issues, he's more right leaning.

Liberal critics like to brand Mcwhorter as a "conservative" because he has opinions, particularly about race, that are different than theirs. This is fallacious logic - disagreeing with one set of opinions does not necessarily make you the opposite of those opinions. Mcwhorter is also branded as a conservative because he has written for the conservative websites city-journal.org and manhattaninstitute.org. Again, this is fallacious logic - the views he expresses on these sites is often far to the left of the other commentators. The article notes that McWhorter "never voted for George Bush". In a March 2015 article at The Daily Beast titled "The Privilege of Checking White Privilege" (www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/15/the-privilege-of-checking-white-privilege.html), McWhorter is quoted as making a stronger statement: "I have never voted Republican in my life."

First, as a widely read author on the state of African-American communities and on race relations, his political views are relevant. Second, In his writing in the late 1990s, he did consider himself a conservative, and implied he would likely vote Republican for federal offices in the future. In radio interviews in the early 2000s, he said that he might well vote for Republicans for President, but did not vote for George W. Bush. That is worth working into the article in some fashion. (The unsigned paragrpah above this is not mine. Dvd Avins (talk) 05:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Characterization of McWhorter's overall position

The change I made, which Eklir wishes to delete, to the paragraph about McWhorter's support for Obama, contains three statements, two of which should be entirely uncontroversial, namely that McWhorter expressed support for Obama and that he is regarded as a conservative. The remaining change consists of two parts. First, it removes the characterization of McWhorter as a conservative and adds the statement that he has no record of taking conservative positions outside the area of race. The deletion is fully justified by the fact that no evidence is offered, in this article or in cited references, that McWhorter is in fact a conservative. The addition is justified by the same facts. What I have written is in fact the default, neutral position, the only one justified by the facts contained in this article or in the references. It is the claim that McWhorter is a conservative that is an unsubtantiated repetition of popular prejudice. Anyone wishing to claim that McWhorter is in fact a conservative has the burden of adducing evidence for this view.Bill (talk) 22:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If you want to add to the article the claim that McWhorter "has no record of expressing conservative views in most areas", you will have to substantiate that. Anyway, the article is a stub on an academic who is mostly a linguist and maybe a sociologist of some kind and his support for Obama is not encyclopedic in scope. I will therefore delete this information as well as any reference to his supposed conservatism (except the fact that the think tank he joined is conservative). Eklir (talk) 07:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I might add to this discussion that many linguists think that JMcW is mostly a pundit and not a linguist. I could not source that to any published material, so it should not be in the article, it is just a comment on the idea by Eklir that he is a linguist who strays in the realm of politics. The inverse perception also exists. Jasy jatere (talk) 08:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

As it is, most linguists dislike McWhorter as a linguist. The fact is that, as far as this encyclopedia is concerned, the referencing to him is mostly concerned with his contributions to linguistics (cf. Creole language, Creolistics, Evolutionary linguistics, Glottochronology, History of the English language, Juncture loss, Language Log, Liberian English, Linguicism, Merritt Ruhlen, Papiamento language, Pidgin, Pleonasm, Rebracketing, Saramaccan language, Socio-historical linguistics, The Language Bioprogram theory, Urbian) and only marginally to things other. Best. Eklir (talk) 20:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I came here hoping to find out how other linguists working in the field of the history of the English language have received McWhorter's ideas of a largely unrecognized influence of Celtic on English in its early stages, but all I found was an unsupported statement that he has "joined scholars who document that English was profoundly influenced by the Celtic languages spoken by peoples encountered by Germanic invaders of Britain." Who are those "scholars," and where do they "document" their arguments? (I don't believe that "document" is the best verb to use here. Maybe "develop the argument that" or "propose" would be better.) Wikipedia requires that claims of this sort be sourced. Jk180 (talk) 03:44, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

@Jk180: I have now added a link to another Wikipedia article treating the subject matter in question, which should help address your concern. The basic idea is definitely not new and was already supported by Jespersen and Förster a century ago, as well as someone as famous both as linguist and otherwise as J. R. R. Tolkien. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:26, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for tagging me, @Florian Blaschke:. The link is helpful. As it's a list of "many, often obscure, characteristics in English that have been proposed as Brittonicisms," which are as far as I can tell not consensus among linguists, I have changed (in this McWhorter entry) "document" to "contend" and "profoundly influenced" to "influenced." For me, "document" and "profoundly influenced" are too strong, even loaded terms. There is theory here, certainly, but no clear documentation, and the degree of the influence should probably not be called "profound" if most of the vocabulary, verb structures, syntax, pronoun systems and case systems, etc. of English remain clearly Germanic in origin. Jk180 (talk) 21:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

It is true that this subject is somewhat controversial and a matter of active research (conclusive proof is hard to come by in a case like this), and therefore I support your changes to the wording, however, I have been impressed by the argument that the change of Old English nominal morphology to the much simplified Middle English type started already before the Norse settlement began, notably in Northern England, and notably before other Germanic languages began to exhibit comparable (and comparably radical) tendencies, while on the other hand, contemporary Brittonic languages (Old Welsh, Old Cornish and Old Breton) displayed a nominal morphology whose simplicity strikingly parallels that of Middle and Modern English, which is highly suggestive of the possibility that English–Brittonic contact (in the form of bilingualism) in early medieval Northern England triggered the cascade of morphological simplification culminating in Modern English's impoverished (from the Old Germanic and also Standard German or Icelandic point of view) morphology. The striking development from Old to Middle English morphology is a long-standing and prominent issue in historical English linguistics and does not belong to the obscure kind of characteristics that have been adduced in support of the Brittonic influence hypothesis. (As a consequence of the morphological changes, the syntax of Modern English is also profoundly different from that of Old English and other Old Germanic languages. Therefore, it would be incorrect to conclude that English has remained essentially Germanic in every significant respect; it has not remained so in respects that are – deliberately – conventionally disregarded or neglected for the purposes of language classifications, exactly because they are sensitive to contact-induced influence.)

Even for those linguists who do not accept the morphological-simplification-triggered-by-Brittonic-influence hypothesis, I think most would agree at the very least that the contention in general that there was at least some (not completely insignificant) Brittonic influence is, at the very least, a well-known, widely discussed among experts, and very respectable hypothesis (and I would add that it is about as well supported by evidence as you could expected – this kind of hypothesis is notoriously difficult to prove even in much better documented circumstances). The idea as such is certainly not original to McWhorter. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:47, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Intellectual Dark Web

You are invited to participate in this AfD discussion about whether to delete Intellectual Dark Web. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

What languages does he know

Just wondering, and since he is a linguist, it seems relevant Animeluvva (talk) 14:17, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

A "linguist" is NOT someone who speaks multiple languages, idiot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.227.105.197 (talk) 20:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, he is a lilnguist, which is someone who studies the science of LANGUAGE so it is sort of relevant. Idiot. 65.79.36.130 (talk) 19:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

My dear fellow editors, please, let us leave the personal derision at the door. Some of my crankiest colleagues do bizarre things but I dare not call them names. Isn't this covered under {{wikipedia::be-kind-to-your-neighbors}}? Rainbow-five (talk) 05:21, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

It's an interesting question, but it's doesn't seem like useful information to me. Any good linguist probably knows at least a little about a lot of languages, but that doesn't mean the linguist is anywhere close to fluent in many of those languages. Jk180 (talk) 03:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

For your information (although this post is years after those above). McWhorter is the lecturer of a series on linguistics by The Teaching Co. (copyright 2019, but I don't think that necessarily means it was produced that year, has the 'feel' of an older work). Anyway, McWhorter himself clearly explains the difference between a polyglot (a speaker of multiple languages) and a linguist. He claims to be learning Mandarin, and seems familiar with Spanish. I suspect he may know more than a couple of languages. How fluent he is in any language other than English I don't know. And as pointed out above is nearly irrelevant here.98.21.246.194 (talk) 00:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

fluent in three and a half languages

"McWhorter is fluent in three and a half languages (English, French, Russian and some Japanese)". How can you be fluent with "some Japanese"? 217.61.147.6 (talk) 18:57, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Fixed, it now is "McWhorter is fluent in three languages (English, French, and Russian), has some competence in spoken Japanese, ...". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:00, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

paragraph

"McWhorter has also been a proponent of a theory that various languages on the island of Flores underwent transformation because of aggressive migrations from the nearby island of Sulawesi, and he has contended that English was influenced by the Celtic languages spoken by the indigenous population and which were then encountered by the Germanic invaders of Britain." --This is a mishmash. It jumps back from the Pacific of unspecified time to Britain of a millennium and a half ago without any transition. 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:5480:A93C:A3C3:3F9D (talk) 20:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)