A Strategy for Reinvigorating Romance Historical Linguistics in the United States

A STRATEGY FOR REINVIGORATING ROMANCE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES David Pharies University of Florida Let me begin by assigning blame. Who ¿s· resjionsible for the decline in interest in our discipline among American students? What constellation of sinister forces has consjiirccl to erase many of our courses from course catalogs, discourage students from taking the few that we have left, and convert our faculty lines to cultural studies as soon as we retire? In the immortal words ofWalt Kellv: "We have met the enemy and he is us." I believe that the current unfashionableness of Romance historical linguistics in American higher education is clue largely to our failure, as practitioners of this discipline, to make it palatable to our students. In his contribution to the original collection of essays on this theme, Joel Rini (2003: 92) also placed the blame on our shoulders, as shown by the following quotation: I would like to know why we continue to allow our colleagues in literature to convert jirofessorial lines previously occupied by Romance linguists into lines for specialists of, for examjile, post-modernist literature.... Or when there are budget cuts to be made, why it is always that Romance linguistics is cut before literature? Joel is certainly justified in being upset about this state of affairs, but I would submit that the problem is not so much that we have failed to fight to retain these lines, courses and programs, or that other groups within our departments have unfairly taken the lines away, but that we U corónica 34.1 (Fall, 2005): 220-28 Historical Romance Linguistics: The Death ofa Discipline?221 have failed to give ourselves the arguments we need in order to make a forceful, convincing case for retaining diem. W^hat sort of arguments would diese be? First and foremost, diey would be statistics showing strong student demand for our courses and our specialties. We need to be able to point to throngs of students clamoring to get into our classes on die history ofSpanish or French, and to large numbers of quality applicants who want to study these subjects at our universities. We need students to be petitioning our chairs to bring back the historical linguistics courses diat have been abolished or abandoned. Second, our case would be strengdiened by evidence of our discipline's vitality at the scholarly level, in die form of(a) proposals for special sessions on historical linguistics at established conferences, (b) dedicated symposia at universities across die country, (c) the continued existence ofjournals exclusively dedicated to our discipline, nurtured by a steady stream ofhigh quality research articles to publish, and the frequent and spontaneous appearance of new journals, (d) large grants and prestigious fellowships being awarded for research in the discipline, and in general (e) evidence of a lively and vital intellectual exchange serving to renew die discipline and inspire new approaches every few years. Not so long ago comparative Romance linguistics was required of all Ph.D. students in French and Spanish at my university (Florida), whether they intended to write about Romance lenition, Rabelais, or die novels ofJulio Cortázar. When this requirement was eliminated a few years ago, I admit that I did not mount a vigorous defense of the status quo. I have already outlined die reason for my inaction. To continue the military metaphor: I was lacking ammunition. In place of die needed dirongs of students clamoring for more, I was faced with students who had begun to ask their advisors why they were being required to study comparative Romance linguistics when diey thought they had more pressing needs. Romance literary scholars now feel diat die foundation of dieir discipline is literary theory, not philology, and many if not most students of linguistics feel diat the combination of a thorough knowledge of a modern language and a theoretical approach is sufficient to enable them to do scientifically worthwhile research. Finally, I could not cite strong evidence of my discipline's vitality as a research area, because the fact is diat most ofthe discipline's vitality these days is in Europe. I strongly believe that Romance historical linguistics is inherendy as interesting and useful as any...