Generative Semantics 3: The Ethos

This chapter describes the distinctive ethos of Generative Semantics, which permeated the field from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, exactly when the counterculture (“the hippies”) were flourishing as a broad cultural movement. While there were many personal motivations in the development of this ethos, a broad generalization holds that just as the counterculture was rooted in rejecting establishment values, the Generative Semantics ethos was rooted in a rejection of perceived Chomskyan values. Their intellectual style embraced humor (Chomsky epitomizes seriousness), political engagement (Chomsky was a forceful activist but segregated his political and linguistic work sharply), and a veneration of data for the sake of data (Chomsky’s data was always highly constrained, in direct service to his theoretical claims; Generative Semanticists eagerly pursued data even when it undermined their theories).