The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110621 Message #2331219
Posted By: The Sandman
02-May-08 - 08:53 AM
Thread Name: Bertsongs? (songs of A. L. 'Bert' Lloyd)
Subject: RE: Bertsongs?
To people like Dick Miles who say that his sins are outweighed by the good things he did...that's well and good, and I agree. But it's really irrelevant. The great American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf was never an academic--he was, in fact, a fire safety inspector. It so happens that his papers were great works of linguistic scholarship. But what if they had been deliberately misleading, and set our understanding of language and cognition back years. Would it be logical to argue: "well, maybe, but he saved a lot of lives as a fire safety inspector, so we can't blame him for those bad things he did?" In short, Bert's good effects on the world outweighed his bad ones, but I can still wish he hadn't had the bad effects.
no, because being a fire safety inspector has nothing to do with the tradition or the folk revival,Berts other work[Singing recording] was very important to the folk revival,so his doubtful scholarship has to be seen in relation to his other contributions to the folk revival.
benjamin lee whorf, may have been a great linguisatic scholar,but the was his only contribution.
ALLloyd is a completely different kettle of fish,his contributuions to the folk revival were many faceted.Dick Miles