Darwin and the Growth of Language Theory

Abstract

Abstract My title embeds an assumption that my argument will pry out again: ‘the growth of language theory ‘. ls knowledge, then, an organic process, its accretions and transformations more than metaphorically like that of the organism? Such taken for granted locutions as ‘growth ‘ illustrate how readily the discourse of one field is appropriated by another. The case I want to examine is one of more conscious appropriation and re-appropriation: that between Darwinian evolutionary theory and language theory. During the last 1 50 years these two major fields of human enquiry have drawn upon each other ‘s evidences, and, even more, upon each other ‘s metaphors, as I shall demonstrate. Equally striking-though harder to demonstrate empirically since this phase of theory-making relies upon the absence of material-is the desire for autonomy which has, from time to time, involved repudiating and suppressing links between the fields. There are often sound intellectual reasons for such disengagement. However, it also seems that for theory to conceive itself as authentic and to establish itself as free-standing, it needs to obliterate traces of dependence and to repudiate analogies with other fields of learning. Such suppressed dependencies may re-emerge later, generating fresh topics of enquiry. This pattern of interchange and autonomy will also be seen to have significance for appraising claims to self-sufficiency in scientific language.