Between two extremes

Abstract

Chapter 21 confronts two opposite perspectives on language and the language / dialect pair with roots in the 1950s and 1960s. On the one hand, it treats generative approaches to linguistic diversity. In general, generative linguists have assumed that dialect-level variation is produced by minor differences in rules, parameters, or constraints and their ordering or ranking, depending on the generative framework which they follow, whereas distinct languages are characterized by major divergences in the same. On the other hand, sociolinguists have focused on linguistic variables rather than systems. As they correlate linguistic phenomena to language-external attributes, their conceptions of the language / dialect distinction tend to be rather hybrid, being shaped by linguistic as well as sociopolitical parameters. This externalist approach has been fiercely criticized by Noam Chomsky. Other linguists have adopted more constructive attitudes, either by supplementing the language / dialect distinction or by supplanting it with an entirely new conception of language.