[From: Bruce Nevin (Fri 921023 08:53:33)]
Bill Powers (921022.1200) ) --
I'm really pleased to hear that you're thinking of writing a paper on
PCT and linguistics.
How could I possibly do otherwise? 
I've been meaning to ask -- in your latest foray into Achumawi (sp?)
land, did you have any time to check out PCT concepts across cultures?
I'm not fluent enough in either applied PCT or Pit River culture to have
identified cultural differences specifically in terms of reference
perceptions. I work as a chameleon (or sponge) and have to devote a
bit of awareness to noticing what changes in me in that context. The
people have been for four or five or more generations in profound
conflict about principles and system concepts (at least), so it is not a
simple matter of immersion in Pit River culture, and most of my
attention was devoted to staying afloat while pursuing my primary aims
of finding speakers of the language, establishing good relations with
them, maintaining existing relationships, and eliciting more linguistic
data. A very busy month!
I am more aware than before how characteristics of the Pit River
language persist in the ways in which the people use the English
language--their "Indian English" dialect. I have to be circumspect
exploring this, as calling attention to differences would immediately be
taken as criticism of their "imperfect" or "incorrect" English.
(Tom Bourbon (Thu, 22 Oct 1992 20:57:00 CDT) ) --
Thank you for your very well focussed critique of the uselessness of
brown-nosing after the manner of Carver-Scheier-Hyland-Lord-Hollenbeck.
I'll save your short list exemplifying the problem.
What I am advocating is rather the opposite of "deliberately softening
its implications". But clearly there is then a problem with being
perceived as "determined to elicit rejection."
If one can get a given paper, say Rick's "hierarchy" paper, rejected
from the same journal first for "saying nothing new" and then for "not
building bridges," one might be able to appeal to the editor's sense of
fairness and decency by pointing out the prohibitive inconsistency.
The former is the current status of Rick's paper I take it, and the
latter might be the response if he resubmits with a preface framing the
whole in terms of metatheory: here is a negative that no one wants, a
theory that describes in multiple places what from another point of view
are aspects of a single phenomenon. Historical examples of Copernicus
et al. a la Kuhn. Touching on how proponents of earlier views in each
case resisted disturbance to their established concepts. Then
highlighting the business about describing the hierarchical structure of
perception and the hierarchical structure of behavior in two kinds of
terms, with negative consequences. Explicitly stating the difficulties
that readers with commitments to the standard concepts have made their
accomodations to their lack of parsimony, and how they will resist
disturbance to those concepts. The piece is thus recast in terms of the
drama of scientific (r)evolution. Reviewers and editor must reject it
(if they do) on those terms, and not merely in terms of the standard
concepts in which their commitments are vested.
It is of course easy for me to speak, not having participated in the
great joy and pleasure etc. (as you describe it). And there is no
guarantee that it would work. Perhaps even it has been tried, by Bill
or others. I don't want to get into the WDYYB (Why Don't You, Yes But)
seesaw. In part I am thinking through how I will deal with similar
processes when I put my show on the road. I know my friend Tom
Ryckman's dissertation on the import of Harris's work for linguistic
metatheory is not published because, even though editors in three
publishing houses in succession (Bradford/MIT, UChi, and one other)
liked it a lot and supported it, they could not get any reviewers to
open it up and read it. No review, no publication. Pretty effective.
I don't think it's an explicit conspiracy. Rather, any two people who
have in common certain arrangements of higher-level reference
perceptions are liable to defend them against disturbance in similar
ways. Having such perceptions (concepts, commitments) in common and
being competent at defending them is what higher education aims to
accomplish, no? Or social membership in general.
Bruce
bn@bbn.com