Via Soulsoup, a super useful (and free) .pdf on “anecdote circles” by the Australian firm Anecdote. I’ve just skimmed it but it looks like a very nice business English resource for speaking skills tasks for groups. I’ll definitely try these protocols out over a couple of classes and see how the techniques can be tweaked for a language learning focus.

Pinker vs. Lakoff is really pretty entertaining.

Usually linguists are a retiring bunch, but there are a few who write bestsellers and/or write on politics and become famous beyond the linguistics community. There’s a fascinating - and fairly bloody – debate going on now between two of these rock stars*: Steven Pinker and George Lakoff, which started with Pinker’s brutal review of Lakoff’s latest book.

Pinker’s a Chomsky/generative grammer guy. Lakoff’s done some interesting stuff with generative semantics that has some anti-Chomsky elements, and has recently become an advisor to the Democrats in the US on linguistic “framing” as a communication strategy, as outlined in his best-seller Don’t Think of an Elephant.

Lakoff just published again, Whose Freedom?, and Pinker savaged it in a review. Lakoff replies to Pinker, gloves off. They both accuse the other of straw-man arguments. It’s a very interesting exchange, and one that takes place within the nexus of linguistics, psychology, and political philosophy, and it really makes one wish there were more hours in the day so as to dive into it and learn enough to take sides.

*The uber-rock star in the linguistics field is of course Chomsky– arguably the most influential intellectual alive, merging and revolutionizing linguistics and psychology almost 50 years ago, then turning to politics, resulting in an equal measure of worship and hatred among his readers, still working and publishing, and, amazingly, on the best-seller list recently at age 77 after Hugo Chavez recommended** one of his books at a UN meeting last month. Chomsky’s in my personal pantheon even though I think much of his political thinking is unhinged.

** Not that Chavez was discussing deep grammar. He was being his usual bombastic self waving around Hegemony or Survival (Chomsky’s recent anti-US tome). This was just before he crossed himself, noting that “The devil came right here… And it still smells of sulfur today” referring to Bush’s speech the previous day.