Talk:Linguistician

Importance

I didn't add the Importance template, but despite doing a fair bit of work on this article I agree that it's kinda pointless. I can't imagine why we need this article. --George 03:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Creator's comment

There was no article on the term “linguistician” or the controversy about it. The latter was admittedly small-scale and low-key, and occurred only occasionally over the years among a few linguisticians and a few others interested in the subject (like me) and in why they some of them insist so on not using a perfectly good and — above all — unambiguous term. Also, it is astonishing how some linguisticians really do seem to get het up about the term being used of them, so it seemed a description of the point was justified. IPH

Especially after this explanation of the coming about of this article, I'm afraid that the parts of it that aren't a dictionary definition qualify as original research. Wikipedia is only a tertiary source, which means that we only should report on issues on which we can cite sources (and verifiable ones at that). I don't think this has a place here. — mark ✎ 18:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge Article: Importance, POV, Verifiability

This article definitely needs to be merged with linguist. More specifically, a short paragraph ought to be added to that article relating the relative usage of the two terms and the reason (i.e. the ambiguity issue) that two terms are proposed. This article is really long for such an esoteric consideration. More to the point, much of the content seems to be

• speculative ("A cynic might suggest in answer that they all hope that other people will assume they are polyglots, and therefore amazingly accomplished; but this is surely unworthy")
• POV (Therefore the fact that linguisticians prefer the ambiguous term for themselves -- because of this prejudice, and probably also because when they tell other people they are "linguists" those people understand "polyglot" and are more impressed than they otherwise might be -- and the fact that some linguisticians have therefore campaigned against the term "linguistician", are most likely to be the real reasons why the unambiguous (and therefore prima faciae better) term does not predominate in current usage.")

A short paragraph in the other article ought to be enough to convey the basic information. I don't think an extended article on this issue is appropriate. This isn't the place for a thinly-disguised campaign to promote the term. If no one objects to this proposal, I will do it.

Please see my user page and note that I am interested in resolving the confusion resulting from the ambiguity in the terms linguistics and linguist which is rampant in many wikipedia articles on those and related topics. Torgo 08:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. It's POV, constitutes original research and grossly exaggerates the importance of the word 'linguistician'. At best, the etymological part is a dicdef and should be moved to wiktionary. This does have no place here. — mark ✎ 09:57, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

in that case, I will add a sentence or two in the linguist page mentioning the term, and turn this page into a redirect to linguist. --Torgo 06:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I have put a redirect at the top of the article to linguist, adding mention of the term on that page. For now I have left the text of the article, to make it easier in case anyone wants to copy some more of the info to the linguist article. I strongly recommend brevity, however. --Torgo 07:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted article content (all that's left is the redirect) Torgo 08:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)