it's a sign

So in my first night as an official mphil/phd student in linguistics, I decided to read something that is not linguistic, i.e. that has nothing to do with linguistics, in other words, that is not even remotely related to linguistics. So I picked up this tiny little book (which I actually bought for my brother) and started reading On Bullshit. And this is just a sample of what I found in the first 3 pages:

• One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.

• We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a concientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.

• My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not or to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of it's concept.

• Any suggestion about what conditions are logically both necessary and sufficient for the constitution of bullshit is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. For one thing, the expression bullshit as a generic term of abuse, with no very specific literal meaning. For another, the phenomenon itself is so vast and amorphous that no crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being procrustean.

It can't get more linguistic than that :) The red parts alone can even easily go into my thesis :) By page 4 I had stopped reading and started thinking with a smile on my face: "it's a sign, wherever I go, whatever I do, linguistics will be right here waiting for me".

This is no bullshit: linguistics is my destiny :)
Isn't it nice to know? :)

Mai