God’s truth

A phrase coined in the 1950s to characterize one of two extreme states of mind of a hypothetical LINGUIST who sets up a DESCRIPTION of linguistic DATA; opposed to HOCUS-POCUS. A ‘God’s truth’ linguist approaches data with the expectation that the LANGUAGE has a ‘real’ STRUCTURE which is waiting to be uncovered. The assumption is that, if one’s procedure of analysis is logical and consistent, the same description would always emerge from the same data, any uncertainty being the result of defective observation or logic on the part of the analyst. In a hocus-pocus approach, by contrast, no such assumption is made.