“Things People Know About Language That Ain't So”

A story from my father on the politics of language

Well, today is a little different.

I’m running the following historical essay by my father, Bill Bright. He wrote it in 1976, when I was 18, and he was 48.

It’s an article that, to my embarrassment, I’ve only now taken an interest in, in my dotage. It’s political; it always was, but I didn’t relate to academia. ;-)

I was close to my dad, Bill Bright— he was a linguist, and he taught me to edit very young, by letting me sit on his lap with a red pencil to try and find printers’ errors in the galleys he worked on every night.

—Just a pencil, because I couldn’t yet be trusted with a pen.

I still don’t think I can be trusted.

Bill could magically speak and write every language, but because he was my daddy, I took it for granted. I can’t tell you how many powwows and brush dances and lost places, deserts and mountains, where I would sit around in his shadow, not understanding any of the words, but getting ideas, nonetheless.

When he started in linguistic studies after WWII, all his peers (…