I came into Linguistics serendipitously. Although I have always been interested in languages, largely due to growing up on the Mexican border, hearing Spanish spoken all around me, in Holtville, California (where my dad worked as a cowboy, bartender, and mechanic), near Mexicali, Mexico, I wasn't particulary interested in science - I wanted to be a musician. But on a trip with my school band to Hollywood, I went to see the movie My Fair Lady (at the Egyptian Theater) and I was fascinated by the work of 'Henry Higgins' (coincidentally, the linguistic consultant for that film was Peter Ladefoged, who became a good friend and co-author, before his death in 2006). Higgins's work attracted me intellectually and because it looked like phoneticians could get rich.
A few years later, I met a family of missionaries who worked in a tribal village in Brazil, among the Satere-Mawe. Eventually I moved to Brazil to be a missionary with SIL International (I no longer have any affiliation with that organization). I completed an Sc.D. in Linguistics at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). For much of my career I conducted research from a Chomskyan, formalist perspective (I wrote the article on Noam Chomsky for the MSN Encarta Encyclopedia.)
My current research is concerned with understanding how cultural values constrain language. I would eventually like to develop an approach to linguistics in the tradition of William James, where the notions of usefulness, coherence, and radical empiricism produce a view and practice of science different than the Cartesian-Popperian views of knowledge that have undergirded so much research in linguistics. I would also like to see the re-cultivation of a Boasian approach to the study of language as something embedded in a rich cultural matrix.
I have lived in jungle villages for more than 7 years of my life and have conducted field research every year since 1977.
I have moved around a lot over the years, for various reasons. After teaching and chairing the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh for several years, I moved to the University of Manchester, where I was Professor of Phonetics and Phonology. But I wearied of the Margaret Thatcher legacy in British higher education, so I moved back to the US, to work at the delightful Illinois State University. I came to a literature department rather than a linguistics department because of my growing conviction that linguistic theory has taken a wrong turn by separating grammar from culture.
In my book, Don't Sleep There are Snakes, I discuss my loss of faith. Although I no longer believe in supernatural beings, for 25 years - after converting to Christianity when I was 17 years old, in 1968 - I was both a minister in the Wesleyan Church and a missionary with SIL International. I believe that although missionary work has some useful social effects (e.g. medical assistence and emergency flights) it is all too often divisive with negative impacts. Teaching indigenous peoples to follow the 'word(s) of god' seems less than useful. There are people who are missionaries that I respect tremendously. But I am not in favor of the enterprise.
My lovely wife Linda.
