Philosophical Ramblings Thread

[HoreTore]

I think what you encountered would be called semiotics rather than linguistics (by the people involved, to get around the fact that linguistics could probably be considered a subset of semiotics), or maybe even something rather different.

My impression is that most linguists are just interested in describing regularities within and between languages, and how people use them.

Yeah, it was sociologists who tried to use linguistics as a tool for understanding the workings of society.

Keep to your books, nerds.

I really object to the trend where every disipline seems to try to make their disipline universal. Pedagogy, for example, isn't just confined to the classroom according to pedagogs. Oh no, pedagogy should be seen as the ultimate philosophy of life. I've lost count of the number of times I showed up to pedagogy lectures only to listen to nonsense about how pedagogy solves everything in society.

The way academic work is financed these days should take a large part of the blame for that, though. When you get more money for this sort of behaviour, of course we will end up seeing more of it.