Appendix: The scientific study of language. Inaugural Lecture, Edinburgh, 1965

Abstract

It would seem to be appropriate for the occupant of a new Chair in an ancient and major university to present in his Inaugural Lecture, before an audience representative of many different subjects taught and studied in the university, a justification of the subject he is called upon to profess – an apologia pro disciplina sua : to discuss its relation to other disciplines and the contribution it is capable of making to the accepted aims of the university in teaching and research. In my lecture this evening, I will claim a place for linguistics at all levels and in many areas of university activity: as a field of research for scholars confident that they are making a significant contribution to the sum of what we call “science” – that they are, as the currently fashionable phrase puts it, “advancing the frontiers of knowledge” – and also as a subject with important practical, or “technological” applications; and, at the same time, as a discipline which can be combined with many different courses of university instruction, as a valuable part of a general education. This then is the task I have set myself in my lecture, and I am conscious of all the difficulties that stand in the way of its successful accomplishment.