ABSTRACT
Rethinking Linguistics is an updating, expansion and substantial
revision of an earlier book, Redefining Linguistics, (Davis and Taylor,
1990). In the opening chapter of Redefining Linguistics I wrote
‘The academic discipline of linguistics is at a critical stage of
development. Whatever consensus there may have been fifteen or
even ten years ago is fast disappearing’ (1). A decade on these words
still ring true. For example, Tom McArthur in the 1996 edition of
The Oxford Companion to the English Language defines linguistics as
The systematic study of language. Its aim is to look at
language objectively, as a human phenomenon, and to
account for languages as they are rather than to prescribe
rules of correctness in their use. It therefore has a twofold
aim: to uncover general principles underlying human
language, and to provide reliable descriptions of individual
languages.
