Linguists (Don't) Only Talk About It

Eighteen scholars from all corners of the world – from Hong Kong to Maribor, from Birmingham to Bad Sankt Leonhard, from Georgetown to Graz – pay tribute to a linguist whose personal and scholarly qualities are extolled on the completion of his sixtieth year. The man's research interests such as corpus analysis, neologisms and the language of politics and religion are given due consideration as is his sense of humour concerning all things linguistic and life in general. Thus the volume contains, among other familiar linguistic topics, a translation of Transnubistani poetry, a modest proposal of a reversion of Wordsworth's "Daffodils", and binding thoughts on people different from themselves. Serious contributions on FUNctional linguistics, applying the Turing test to corpus analysis, and the marmalade war between Austria and the EU alternate with more light-hearted topics such as Chomsky, deixis in field work, and the consequences of globalisation on English. The title of the book is a corruption – in both senses of the word – of the motto of a semi-scholarly society of which the editors and the Festschriftee are prominent members: 'Linguists only talk about it'. The contributions prove that there is more to linguists than meets the eye.