The absentee-voting system that allows U.S. military personnel to cast votes using e-mail messages and faxes is rife with security weaknesses, says a report released on Wednesday by four academic computer scientists.
The system exposes soldiers to identity theft and creates an opportunity for foreign governments or hackers to tamper with ballots, the researchers conclude.
The report, "Internet Voting Revisited: Security and Identity Theft Risks of the DoD's Interim Voting Assistance System," was written by Aviel D. Rubin, of Johns Hopkins University; Barbara Simons, a former president of the Association for Computing Machinery; David Wagner, of the University of California at Berkeley; and David R. Jefferson, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. — Andrea L. Foster
36 Responses to Are Soldiers’ Ballots Secure?
judithryan43 - March 2, 2012 at 7:19 am
I await the positive suggestions for good arguments.
johnlehman - March 2, 2012 at 7:32 am
One advantage of teaching in China this semester is that I get to be one of the first commenters due to the timezone differences :-)
I am one of the minority of non-Chinese Americans whom you refer to in that I speak, read and write Chinese. It took 3 years of 8-12 credits of Chinese classes a semester in the US plus two years studying full-time in Taiwan (this was in the 1970′s) to develop the fluency of a Chinese junior high school student. After 40 years and 50+ trips to China, I can function at about high school level except in a few areas where I have specialized. The idea that someone can take 4-6 semesters of four credit language classes and master Chinese is absurd. The suggestion made by some administrators that a 6 week intensive program in China which also includes 6 credits of “content” courses will be enough is beyond silly. By comparison, I am far more fluent in French and German, to which I have devoted much less time. This is not a personal fluke — decades ago the DoD estimated that the number of hours required to master spoken Mandarin was 3-4 times that required for Western European languages, and that doesn’t count the writing system.
That said, fluency in Chinese (added to an MBA and PhD in Management) has meant a very successful career, since native English speakers with those skills are extremely rare. Even given the increased interest in China, I never expect to see more than one non-Chinese American fluent in Chinese for every thousand Chinese fluent in English, since American students will not devote the thousands of hours needed to acquire fluency to something which the US education system pretends can be done in a few hundred hours without sacrificing the “important” courses in the curriculum.
grupenhoff - March 2, 2012 at 9:44 am
You say that the charges that you defend anti-intellectualism “look silly to those readers who actually read what I wrote.” Not at all. When you consider the amount of negative responses to your first post, you might consider that it is due the lack of your ability to communicate your ideas in plain English. It’s ironic that your post was about foreign language mastery when you have a lot of work to do on your own native tongue. People are shouting at you because you are incomprehensible. Perhaps you might consider rewrites?
nordicexpat - March 2, 2012 at 10:06 am
Please. Quote one sentence from the blog that was incomprehensible.
anon1972 - March 2, 2012 at 10:42 am
Dude, quit whining. Seriously. In your first column, you pooh-poohed some of the arguments that are routinely made in support of language learning BECAUSE they represent principles that are strongly held by many of us who devote our lives to the teaching and learning of foreign languages and literatures. You called them “bunk,” and you offered no alternative — just as here, you spend all 500 of your words on berating those who disagreed with you and AGAIN offer no alternative arguments that you deem “stronger.” What were you expecting, a bouquet of roses from the foreign-language and area studies faculty reading the CHE?
We all look forward to hearing what arguments you find more persuasive than the ones we continue to believe in, such as the notion that immersing oneself in a foreign language opens doors that interpreters can’t, that the cognitive gains from serious language study exceed the mere benefits of actually being able to talk to foreigners (though those benefits are also not to be sniffed at, since many foreigners will warm to you enormously if you make an effort to speak their language, even if they are bilingual in English), and that serious study of a foreign language enlarges one’s vocabulary of concepts (I’m sorry you don’t feel that French has done this for you, but perhaps you either didn’t study it lovingly enough or you are simply unaware of how it has altered and broadened your perspective on the world and on language in general, attributing those gains to some other area of your intellectual pursuits).
As I was saying….we all look forward to hearing your new and improved arguments, when you get around to making them. Perhaps in your next column you’ll see fit to make some suggestions, at which point we will be happy to rally around and take them seriously.
Meanwhile, I continue to disagree, strongly, with your idea that it simply isn’t practical to learn to write Chinese. It’s not practical for those whose goal is exclusively to learn to SPEAK Chinese, certainly. And I think you’ll find there is a whole market out there of language schools (Berlitz et al) as well as published products and programs (Rosetta Stone, the “Teach Yourself” series, etc.) that cater to precisely that need. It is not underserved. One can argue that universities should offer a Pinyin track IN ADDITION to their traditional Chinese track (and I imagine some already do), but this is arguing for MORE language instruction, not less — because what definitely SHOULD NOT happen is universities doing away with their traditional Chinese courses. Because for those students who want to immerse themselves seriously in Chinese language in culture — not just to make conversation with colleagues in a non-academic field, but actually to study the language and culture in depth — the study of traditional Chinese is not only practical, but necessary. And rewarding!
After all, the study of ancient Aramaic is not exactly “practical” either — but if nobody bothered with it, there would be no one to decipher the next set of Dead Sea Scrolls to come to light. Universities exist to safeguard precisely this kind of specialized knowledge and erudition — not to reproduce forms of knowledge that are so “practical” they can be easily Googled for and purchased with the click of a mouse, and that therefore need no such safeguarding.
anon1972 - March 2, 2012 at 10:45 am
And yet I get the sense from your post that you do not consider the time you spent learning Chinese “wasted,” or your own skills “impractical.” Surely you must wish you hadn’t bothered, since as Prof. Pullum points out, it wasn’t “smart or cost-effective” for your undergraduate institution to invest in the resources that made it possible for you to do this learning!
graylibrary - March 2, 2012 at 11:16 am
You need to look at the notion of practicality here. First, get rid of any notions of romanticism, international goodwill and intellectualism. Next, understand that some people are wired for languages and some aren’t. Finally, Myler’s Communication Maxim applies: unless you are speaking with a UN interpreter or a CIA operative, when conversing with someone in their non-native (what their mother spoke to them) language, something will be lost in translation.
So, our best bet is to encourage and support those amongst us who are natural polyglots and to spend the balance of our energies developing a workable electronic Babelfish (see Adam’s “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”). The technology is there.
Ludo Totem - March 2, 2012 at 11:18 am
I have no idea what “metaphysical Whorfian relativism” might be, or whether Pullum’s characterization of it as “vapid” is accurate (one suspects that it is), but I can say that for me (and for many others, I imagine) the best reason to learn one foreign language is that it makes it easier to learn another.
I can’t say, alas, whether this reason can be used to good effect in the arguments made to compel other people to study foreign languages. I suspect not.
lmgasbarrone - March 2, 2012 at 11:38 am
Like judithryan43, I am also waiting for the good (or better) arguments. I am inclined to agree with Prof. Pullum that the ones we use seem to fall short. I actually think the same is true for the humanities in general, as a couple of commenters on the previous post noted. Rightly or wrongly, my sense is that the general public perceives the whole business of learning languages as a window into culture, literature, global understanding, etc. as “soft focus.” This is not what I think, of course, but rather my sense of how such arguments are perceived.
Languages continue to be a tough sell. At my campus, we have had some success because prospective students and their parents have pushed us to remain competitive in terms of recruitment. The wider culture in the US is a different story, however. Despite the fact that we have at least two languages operating in parallel widely across the US, many Americans (English-speaking) remain defensively monolingual. But I’m headed towards the 2000 words, here, so let me cut to the chase.
What Prof. Pullum seemed to be saying in his other post (and here) is not so much that we have offered BAD reasons (some commenters dispute that), but that our reasons don’t fly with the general public. So, assuming a good argument is one that is persuasive, what case should we be making?
Overall cognitive benefits?
(These arguments are being made now even for the study of literature, and the outcomes/assessment climate we are in, perhaps they should be strengthened. Maybe this case would be most effective for the K-12 level where there is still so much work to do to convince people of the value of language learning. I’ll post an anecdote to follow.)
Competitive edge in business, marketing?
(Likely true. I do think you’re going to sell more of whatever you’re selling abroad if you have some people on board who know the language. You don’t have to get all touchy-feely to acknowledge that language is an important path to knowledge of a culture. This is true even within languages where accent and usage can vary to the point of certain misunderstanding, and even near incomprehensibility.)
Security concerns?
(We do – alas – need people “listening” worldwide, and able to interecept, translate, etc.)
Sorry to go on at length. I have thought for years that it is ironic that people who are supposed to be skilled at making arguments seem not to be able to find convincing ones. On my bad days, I just think this is because – again, in the US at least – we have a public that remains almost willfully deaf on these issues. I can bemoan that as much as I like, but it doesn’t get me very far if my goal is to persuade.
lmgasbarrone - March 2, 2012 at 11:43 am
Here’s my anecdote. I once had a chat with my daughter’s elementary school principal, a woman I liked and admired a great deal. She said that she didn’t really get the point of offering language classes at that level, because by the time they reached the eighth grade, they still couldn’t really speak. I said – well, they can’t do calculus either, but we still teach them math. She actually found that persuasive. But she still didn’t have the funds.
lmgasbarrone - March 2, 2012 at 11:50 am
graylibrary – I agree. Practicalities prevail, and some of what are perceived as the fuzzier justifications can follow. And you’re right,too, that something will be lost translation. It would be a shame to limit language learning only to those who are natural polyglots, however. The fact is that it is hard work, but it is also (a lot of) fun to achieve some level of communicative competency in a second language. I’m all for developing technologies to help, but the bottom line is people conversing. Even if they’re not fluent, this is desirable. Just my view, of course.
terrycollmann - March 2, 2012 at 11:55 am
Anon1972 – dude – where’s your proof that “cognitive gains from serious language study exceed the mere benefits of
actually being able to talk to foreigners” or “serious study of a foreign language
enlarges one’s vocabulary of concepts”? Have you got studies that show this? And would the sum of human knowledge have been massively reduced if no one could read the Dead Sea Scrolls? Really – dude?
beedhamm - March 2, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Now I know why Pullum doesn’t respond to comments, as Saller does. He just holds on to his comments for a week or two and then posts them as “new” entries. No wandering among the plebes for him. Nice work if you can get it.
Guest - March 2, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Whoa! Nice analogy. I like.
Of course, the problem with it as an analogy is that when the kids start learning calculus no one has persuaded them that an arrow shot from a bow never reaches its destination because it always has to travel an infinitely receding half point along the way. And they aren’t inhibited by the certain knowledge that circles are ideal forms for planetary orbits while ellipses are barbarous expressions of force and velocity.
katisumas - March 2, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Lets just look at the facts: ALL elementary school students in all other Western countries and many others are already learning a second language. They are also doing better in writing their own language and are better in math. Hmmmmm?
And why doesn’t Professor Pullum argue that spending years learning algebra, calculus, trig, etc etc is useless? Why isn’t that a waste of time? And how about quantum theory in college? Might as well be studying Greek (modern that is!)
And then budget cuts have done away with most music programs in K-12 grades even though studies show that learning to play an instrument makes you better at math later on — oh I forgot, math is useless, I mean we do have calculators, right? As for music, learning those musical notes is soooo taxing on human memory! And then they come in different keys. How useless is that!
As for art, what a waste of time! Next they’ll be trying to teach kids to write in cursive when all they have to do is speak to a computer or some such device.
As for learning the “orthographies” of Finish etc, good luck. In most languages there is little connection between sounding out letters and making out words. Just ask any speaker of English as a second language! The fact is that your article and many comments seem to be confusing written and spoken language. It doesn’t take any longer to learn to speak and understand Chinese than to speak and understand English. Children can learn both at once just as fast as learning only one. How the languages are written is another story altogether. However, I suspect that if you first learn to speak Chinese, learning the Chinese system of writing that is made up of recurring signs used to form different meanings, will be much easier if you already know what meaning they are referring to.
As for “Whorfian metaphysics” please! There’s nothing remotely metaphysical about it. It holds that difference in grammar make for different cognitive world views. For instance a language that has no future tense, they argued, makes you have a different sense of time. This hypothesis conceived in the first part of the twentieth century is based on scores of patient recording of American Indian languages. That’s why it’s not metaphysical but based on empirical work.
There are still controversies around this hypothesis. However as a translator that has crashed into the Whorfian barrier a number of time and always armed with patience eventually found my way around it, my stance is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is half true and half false (yes, I know I know, next you’re going to cite Aristotle, but Aristotelian logic based on the premiss that something cannot be true and false at the same time has been left way way behind by contemporary logicians). It’s half true and half false because these grammatical differences can be overcome in translation as well as by oral interpretation.
But this is not relevant to our discussion. Come to think of it, you probably object to the whole field of anthropology, anthropological linguisitcs and linguistics itself? I mean what use is taxing our brains with these?
theatheist - March 2, 2012 at 1:01 pm
If this isn’t plain as day, I don’t know what is:
“Like most educators I feel instinctively that foreign language instruction is a Good Thing.”
Maybe you should consider re-reading?
katisumas - March 2, 2012 at 1:04 pm
There’s nothing “vapid” about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and certainly nothing metaphysical.
I suspect I can’t get you to read a linguistics 101 or an anthropology 101 text but at least check it out on Wikepedia. You might not agree with it, as I stated in my comment above, but “vapid”?????? If it was vapid, surely it would no longer be the focus of controversy after almost 80 years since it was first formulated on the basis of painstakenly empirical research? (perhaps you and Pullum ought to look up the definition of “vapid”?)
katisumas - March 2, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Look up some physiological evidence. We are ALL wired to learn any natural human language (“natural” because they all have the same structure despite surface difference, you know, like a skeleton but more abstract).
Children can learn a number of languages without any one being more difficult than another. Things do change after a few years (some put age 7 as the cut off point for learning a language because by then the brain has used that space for other purposes — but they are making new inroads even in that), and there appears to be a cut off point around age 14 for most (but not all) people to learn to speak a new language without an accent.
Some adults have more aptitude than some others for picking up languages mostly it seems because of the way languages are thought. If you’re dropped off in a village in China where no one speaks English, I guarantee you that you’ll speak and understand the essential of the local Chinese language within a few weeks and you’d be fluent in it within a year…. I also guarantee that you’ll get a better handle on English along the way.
magyar - March 2, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Professor Pullum, you insist on supporting you assertions with evidence. Come on, stop it: it makes it harder for people to disagreee with what you say (though it doesn’t seem to stop them disagreeing with what you don’t say…) Play fair and abandon the use of evidence: anyone can win an argument with facts.
katisumas - March 2, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Spoken and written languages are not the same thing. When you speak of “fluency” you are referring to the spoken word. Surely you’d agree with me that learning to speak and understand Chinese is not harder than for instance learning to speak and understand Hungarian?
It’s harder to write Chinese, but that is very different from being able to speak and understand it.
You can’t master any language by just taking 4 to 6 semesters courses in it. You have to immerse yourself in situations where you have to SPEAK it. Many people have difficulty with that because they’re afraid of making fools of themselves (this is the case of many elderly immigrants to the US). People who quickly become fluent in speaking and understanding a language other than their native one do so because they are not afraid of fumbling their way through communicating in it at the start (and supplementing that communication with signs and facial expressions as Europeans and others tend to do when they routinely interact with people speaking other languages).
lucero - March 2, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Also waiting for the strong arguments or else change it to “How Not to…” People never know when they might need a second language. A friend of mine and her husband recently bought a house in Mexico to retire. They make frequent trips to Mexico and are both scrambling to learn Spanish. My friend grew up speaking it but did not continue study or practice–she kicks herself. The husband never studied it and now is in a position to have to sign contracts and deal with workers and neighbors in Spanish–he’s learning fast after taking a Continuing Ed. course.
Depending what happens in the next five years, this may all change. The fact is, the U.S. may not be the leader it once was and there may be other countries, China and Brazil, for example that may yield increasing power in the world. If the employment situation worsens then Americans may start looking for work in other countries. This has already happened with highly educated people and may start to trickle down if no work materializes other than menial service jobs. Americans have been complacent for a long time about foreign languages because many Americans never left the country.
bscmath78 - March 2, 2012 at 1:45 pm
22089159x, please explain further, since your examples actually seemed to convince many Ancients and many academics, until say Kepler or Newton. Or is your point that the college students of the Humanities often have had their minds so warped that they will be fooled by such ancient sophistry?
Zeno’s Paradoxes were used in modern times to illustrate the dangers of believing philosophers, sophists and logicians. You may have confused the arrow paradox with the dichotomy paradox.
Aristotle’s adoration of perfect circles was just one example of the mischief he caused and perpetrated.
The analogy ignores the fact that only 4.4% of all jobs are STEM jobs, according to a recent Georgetown study. And really, how many computer programmers can currently do integrals or ever needed to do so on the job? So to be realistic only about 10% of students need to learn calculus and it is only that number because many switch to other majors or get non-STEM jobs, so an excess is needed in order have sufficient survivors to go after the 4.4% of jobs. The same 10% should also consider learning a foreign language.
http://chronicle.com/article/High-Demand-for-Science/129472/#comment-340057829
bscmath78 - March 2, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Another set of important languages to learn in high school are the languages of material manipulation and machines, through each student manually performing tasks in: the chemistry lab, the physics lab, the wood shop, the metal shop and the auto shop. Students should learn the language of the running car engine and learn to listen to what the car is saying s wrong.
I once saw somewhere that the only common factor someone found among a
group of Nobel Prize winners was that they had all worked at one time
in a machine shop, it being theorized that this might have given them
an affinity for designing experimental apparatus.
“When you show me that result, the computer understands the answer, but I don’t think you understand the answer.”
- Physics Nobel Prize winner Victor Weisskopf
“I’m happy that the computer understands the phenomenon, but I’d like to understand it too.”- Physics Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/re-engineering-engineering-education-to-retain-students/28745#comment-445028522
nordicexpat - March 2, 2012 at 2:26 pm
While I too find the remark some cryptic, I think she means that many people’s understanding of language is comprised solely of mistaken and/or outdated beliefs. So there is an awful lot they need to “unlearn,” with the implication that this doesn’t happen with other subjects (although I would say that this applies to most fields as well).
magyar - March 2, 2012 at 4:25 pm
“Lets just look at the facts: ALL elementary school students in all other Western countries and many others are already learning a second language. They are also doing better in writing their own language and are better in math. Hmmmmm?”
Could you state your source for this claim? This report from UNICEF on literacy levels and maths proficiency seems to contradict it.
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard4e.pdf
sanderrh - March 2, 2012 at 4:36 pm
terrycollmann: for research on “cognitive gains from serious language study” see, for example:
Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. rev. and ed. Alex Kazulin. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986
(Vygotsky argues for the interrelatedness of foreign language learning, the development of higher competence in the native language, and acquisition of written language. He further argues that conscious or classroom learning of language, produces particular gains in the learner that may not accrue to the person who has in effect two native languages, specifically because of the intellectual effort required for study);
Kecskes, Istvan, and Tünde Papp, Foreign Language and Mother Tongue. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000
(Kecskes and Papp tested second-year language learners with mother-tongue/learned language pairs of strongly differentiated typology such as French-Russian; Estonian-Swedish, and Swedish-Finnish, and compared them with learners whose language pairs were typologically similar, such as English-Swedish, Estonian-Finnish. They found that all learners demonstrated increased native language writing ability; those whose language pairs were of strongly different typology (i.e., ‘difficult’ learned languages) showed an even stronger increased native language writing ability);
Following are some studies on bilinguals, that is, those who learned more than one language in childhood, through exposure rather than classroom learning:
Mechelli, Andrea, et al. “Structural Plasticity in the Bilingual Brain.” Nature 14 Oct. 2004: 757. Online at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/4532/n7010/pdf/431757n.pdf
Bialystock, Ellen, et al. “Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon Task.” Psychology and Aging June 2004: 20-303.
This should give you a start. This is a relatively well researched area, although much more needs to be done.
Ben Hemmens - March 2, 2012 at 5:04 pm
“Some cannot forgive my dismissal of vapid metaphysical Whorfian relativism.”
It would be a bit tricky to forgive it, since I completely agree with it. But I think there’s a lot of space in between “learning words” and “reading Balzac” for passing on bits of knowledge about the culture associated with the target language, non-Whorfianly. And I think that’s something that often happens in language classes which might not fit in as naturally in classes either aiming to be purely about culture (without language) or languages in general (without attempting to learn specific ones).
E.g. the teacher explaining aspects of everyday culture or showing texts from newspapers, signs in shops, or from some genre relevant to the learners: job applications, business letters, technical texts for engineers or whatever. Anecdotes that illustrate what is considered good manners in the culture of the target language might also count. For example, when it is important to greet people and how – it would be fairly strained to do the language of that without the culture or vice versa, but the connection between the two isn’t a mystical property of the words: it’s something you have to learn in addition to them.
The Balzac and Camus example is handy because it’s something that wouldn’t be a very good reason for language instruction. Nobody gets to that level on a basic course or two, and such prominent authors are often available in decent translations.
I only wish to add that I never took Prof. Pullum for an opponent of language instruction or for the kind of unsympathetic-to-other-cultures boor that some other commenters seem to be attacking him for being; if that misunderstanding has arisen, I’m sure it’s my fault. I’m sorry if what I wrote turned out to be a load of old cobblers; can happen sometimes.
Maybe the most serious reason for a spot of language learning is simply: it’s fun. See: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3721. Surely anything that – even incompletely learned, and many years later – makes passing through a foreign airport more amusing is worthwhile.
And now I’m done, as far as this topic is concerned.
johnlehman - March 2, 2012 at 8:56 pm
Obviously I don’t consider the time wasted, and the marketplace has amply rewarded me for the investment :-) But, had I taken only the usual 2-3 years of non-intensive Chinese and then stopped, it would not have been worth the time and effort, pace the talk about the intellectual gains from being exposed to a language without mastering it.
Part of the problem is that the discussion confuses three (or more) different topics.
(1) mastery of a language as a professional tool (investment — thousands of hours).
(2) mastery of a language to the point where one can really put oneself into another culture (in Chinese, due to the need to learn at least some of the classical language, this probably requires close to 10,000 hours).
(3) being exposed to a language as a form of intellectual broadening, without learning it well enough either to use it or to enter into the other culture (investment — a couple hundred hours at most).
Unfortunately, the last is what the US education system does in the vast majority of cases. The benefits of the first two are quite clear (at least to me). The benefits of the dabbling approach is what is harder to defend.
jffoster - March 3, 2012 at 9:41 am
Sorry. This got here instead of above as a reply to Katisumas’ reply to Totem, probably because I hit the wrong button. I’ve deleted the substance and put it where it belongs.
.
jffoster - March 3, 2012 at 9:45 am
Well, I’m not so sure how much of the research was “painstaking”. Whorf didn’t even anyalyze English accurately — he classed it as having a future tense and it doesn’t. He could neither cite Boas on his Eskimo snow words claim nor could Whorf manage to get what Boas actually wrote right. He missed both Boas’ actual data and his conclusion, and ignores the latter while mispresenting the former.
Moreover, Whorfian Relativity is not really a significant focus of controversy for the vast majority of Linguists. It is certainly not “the” focus of controversy for most of us. We most of us, including most typologists like me, largely ignore it and only address it when others, many of whom want desperately to believe it (even though exactly what it claims is often unclear), bring it up. There are a few real linguists in recent times who have suggested it might be taken more seriously and redeveloped — John Lucy comes to mind.
A word about Linguistics 101 and Anthropology 101 Textbooks, since you brought them up in chiding Totem.. Most of the former give little attention to Whorf and less credence. Anthropology beginning textbooks vary–those who emphasize the symbolic end or have a symbolic anthropology / psychological anthropolgy bent are apt to give Whorf more serious treatment. Those with a cultural materialist or cultural ecological bent are less apt to. Many cultural anthropologists want desperately to believe it but the education and training of modern cultural anthropologists in Linguistics is uneven and often rather rudimentary.
raymond_j_ritchie - March 4, 2012 at 9:10 am
You are wrong mate. Last time I looked Australia and New Zealand, at least for now, are still Western countries. In Australia and NZ it is practically impossible to learn a foreign language if your parents are not wealthy enough to be able to send you to a private primary and secondary school (about $20K a year). A non-ethnic second language in both countries is a sure sign that you are dealing with someone from a snotty private school with all that that implies. The upper socioeconomic establishment mercilessly uses bilingualism as a gatekeeping weapon against first generation graduates like myself who do not have a private school background. Not pleasant.
I am a Plant Scientist. I have never had any use for a second language even though I have often worked in labs of 5 or 6 people, none of whom shared a first language. I now work in SE Asia.
Incidentally, I note a strong smell of exclusionist gatekeeping in the writings of many who try to justify foreign language teaching. If the benefit is mental excercise then raising the status of maths and physics to being socioeconomically prestige knowledge would benefit humanity more directly.
pullum - March 5, 2012 at 1:36 pm
On the vapid metaphysical kind of Whorfian linguistic relativism, see the section (due mainly to Barbara Scholz) of the “Philosophy of Linguistics” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The URL that should take you to the right section (if The Chronicle’s spam protection software does not block it) is:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/#Who
pullum - March 5, 2012 at 1:47 pm
It’s not true that I never respond to comments. But it would be hard to argue that I should spend much time responding to comments as whiny, embittered, rude, unjust, and contentless as this one, wouldn’t it?
pullum - March 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Katisumas still insists on treating me with the scorn deserved by someone who had suggested that studying foreign languages was useless, when I have clearly stated that I think the opposite.
He also insists that the Whorfian claim about your language influencing your worldview was a hypothesis arrived at after careful empirical study of Amerindian languages. It was not. As Barbara Scholz pointed out to me, Benjamin Lee Whorf was rather deeply interested in the mysticism of the theosophy movement, and he certainly never offered anything like a hypothesis. To say that “difference[s] in grammar make for different cognitive world views” is far too woolly to be a hypothesis. To repeat, it would be useful to read Barbara’s section on Whorfianism in the “Philosophy of Linguistics” article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/).
beedhamm - March 5, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Well, I guess I stand corrected.
I thought I was being quite light-hearted. Huh. For the record, I wasn’t proposing that you should respond to my comment. Your entire post above, however, would not have been out of place in the comments section of the first article [note: that was the content]. Before you get out your thesaurus to think up more adjectives for me, explain how that’s not true.
Now, scolded by Pullum, I will return, head hung low and cheeks blazing, to my sandwich.
beedhamm - March 5, 2012 at 9:37 pm
“It’s not true that I never respond to comments.”
Your profile shows that when I first posted you had responded to the many people who are good enough to come and read your blogs and provide comments a grand total of ONCE. So, the line quoted above quotation would more accurately be expressed, “I once responded to a comment.” The comment I first posted was unimportant, but lots of other commenters provide interesting material, and it would be nice if the conversation were continued at that time rather than a week or two later … and without the venom.