 "Photo: Courtesy of Yvonne Bickerton")
An English major from Cambridge with a love of adventure, Derek Bickerton answered an advertisement to teach English in Ghana in the early '60s. Soon after, he fell in love with the study of the Creole languages that he encountered there, a love that has led to a career in linguistics that has truly changed the field. Now as professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Hawaii, Bickerton has published "Bastard Tongues," a memoir of his career as a Creolist and his Bioprogram hypothesis, which posits that there is an inherent biological capability within the human brain programmed to construct language. Bickerton, along with his longtime friend and UT professor of linguistics, Ian F. Hancock, sat down with The Daily Texan during his recent visit to Austin.
Daily Texan: Both the literary and reading entertainment communities have really enjoyed your book and received it well. How do you think the academic, and specifically the linguistic community, is responding to "Bastard Tongues"?
Derek Bickerton: I think they'll be conflicted. Some of them will get a feel for what I'm doing, but most of them will be a little upset because they don't think I take them seriously enough, and academics love to be taken seriously. I think they will say I have attitude.
DT: You talk in your book about how so many other Creolists refuse your Bioprogram theory. Why do you think that is?
DB: You know, to this day, it mystifies me. I can see the reason that some of them are anti-generativist and will reject anything that smells ever so faintly of [Noam] Chomsky. Others, I can't understand it. I honestly don't know. ... It's really the other Creolists [who reject it so adamantly], the people who should be the experts. You know what a crab barrel is? Well, this is the image used in the Caribbean to describe Caribbean politics. But I think it applies equally to Creole studies. The crabs at the bottom of the barrel want to get to the top, and the only way they can get to the top is by pulling down whoever is on top of them. I basically think that all that's going on here. Why else would you resist by denying things that to me seem so blatantly obvious that the rest of the linguistic community accepts?
DT: Do these disputes happen live at conferences or via academic journals, or what?
Ian Hancock: Particularly in the bars after conferences. [Laughs]
DT: The methodology of "Bastard Tongues" is so different from the methodology of other just purely academic works. It's playful, enthusiastic; there is a fresh curiosity with each new question. How do you stay so fresh in this "crab barrel" of academia?
DB: Essentially, it's because I am curious. I am extremely curious about anything. I have this passion to know stuff. I like to dig out stuff that's not been dug out before. Basically, I like to be surprised. I suppose that normal life is a bit dull for me and I need extra stimulation, so I get it any way I can. The thing of it is, if you're looking for something new, by god, you'll find it, but you've really got to look. I've learned the hard way the lesson that you have always got to look. Never take anything for granted. If you hear a rumor that something exists, go out in person and check it out.
DT: What do you think are the practical applications of linguistic theories such as your own, outside of the academic community?
DB: Ultimately, we are interested in learned about why we are different from other species. If we are going to understand ourselves, it seems like the only way. It's very important, quite a bit more important than politics or economics or all of these things that we are churning over day by day. You're never going to extract any real rhyme or reason to it, because you don't know basically what the animal is that's doing all of the "politic-ing" and "economic-ing" and all of these things. And if you don't know what he is, then forget about it! So this is where it's at, this is where the rubber meets the road.
DT: In what direction do you see the linguistic community heading as a field?
DB: [laughs] Can I say nowhere?
IH: They seem to be reinventing the wheel.
DT: For all of the undergraduates out there, what was your fondest memory of college?
DB: My fondest memory was lying in a punt on the river Cannes, drinking beer. I have no fond memories of academia at all. I never went to any lectures. You didn't have to go to lectures, so I didn't go. Wait, that's a lie. In my third year, I went to a lecture, but that was only because I had arranged to meet somebody there; brilliant place to meet someone.
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