Since its publication in July 2020, the Open Letter to the LSA regarding Steven Pinker has evoked many passionate reactions. The letter argued that Pinker's public statements are inconsistent with the LSA’s anti-racist values, asking to revoke Pinker's status as LSA Fellow and to remove him from the LSA's list of Media Experts. Signed by 600+ linguists, the letter has generated vigorous debate within and outside linguistics. This talk pushes the discussion forward by analyzing the responses to the letter using the tools of our profession – pragmatics and discourse analysis – and further suggesting an approach for examining the power of all individuals in the field.
Abstract. The at-issue status of a proposition and its availability for anaphora have been tightly linked in the literature (e.g., Tonhauser 2012; Syrett & Koev 2014). In particular, a frequently used diagnostic for at-issueness crucially relies on propositional anaphora. I argue that two different QUD-based diagnostics from Tonhauser 2012-which do not rely on anaphora-more reliably identify at-issueness. I use these diagnostics to show that neither at-issueness nor availability for anaphora reliably determine one another.
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