The will to communicate.
| Autor | Pérez, Diana I. |
| Cargo | Artículo en inglés |
RESUMEN: En este trabajo discuto la idea de Rodriguez-Pereyra acerca de que la filosofía analítica debería publicarse exclusivamente en inglés. Focalizo mi respuesta en tres temas: (1) la concepción implícita de la filosofía y la práctica filosófica que subyace a su argumento, (2) el mito del "hablante nativo" y (3) ciertos valores que creo que deberían guiar la filosofía y que busco destacar.
PALABRAS CLAVE: filosofía, hablante nativo, filosofía analítica
SUMMARY: In this paper I discuss Rodriguez-Pereyra's claim according to which analytical philosophy should be published exclusively in English. I focus my reply on three issues: (1) the implicit conception of philosophy and of the philosophical practice that underlies his argument, (2) the myth of the "native speaker" and (3) some values that should guide philosophy and which I propose to highlight.
KEY WORDS: philosophy, native speaker, analytic philosophy
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When I was young I was told that Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Romans, Italy and Spain, Archduke of Austria, and Duke of Burgundy (1500-1558) held that there are different languages for different human activities: German for guiding horses, English for ordering dogs, French for diplomacy and Spanish for love. (1) Leaving aside the historical reliability of this quotation, the idea behind it (and behind Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra's note) is the same: there are appropriate languages for each kind of human activity. Native English-speakers probably feel as uneasy with my starting quotation from Charles V, as I do as a native Spanish-speaking analytic philosopher with Gonzalo's note.
There are many things that can be said about Gonzalo's arguments, but I will concentrate on three issues: (1) the implicit conception of philosophy and of the philosophical practice that underlies them, (2) the myth of the "native speaker" and (3) some values I propose to highlight.
Philosophy and its Practice
Gonzalo's thesis is the following: "original work of research in analytic philosophy broadly conceived should nowadays be published exclusively in English. Publishing such work in English is very valuable, but publishing it in languages other than English is of little or no value".
The main reason Gonzalo gives in support to this claim is a fact about the number of English potential readers and the number of journals that publish papers in English. But his conclusion includes the word "should". I will leave aside the obvious philosophical difficulties that lie behind the naturalistic fallacy. Instead I will remark that from the very same fact we can draw different norms: for example, in response to the fact that there are less Afro-Americans in universities in the United States many departments adopted the policy of establishing quotas to ensure their presence, and a similar policy has also been applied in the case of women as well as with other minorities. So we might well conclude that the best norm we can draw from the fact that the great majority of papers are published in English is that the journals should establish a quota of foreign languages articles to be included in each number, instead of concluding that it is less valuable to publish in a minority language. Which inference we draw depends upon what other values we decide to adopt.
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