History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences

In this insightful conversation, Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in linguistics known for his groundbreaking theories on generative grammar, reflects on the emergence of this revolutionary framework. He critiques the behaviorist approach and explores key psychological experiments that reshaped cognitive theories. Chomsky shares intriguing anecdotes from his early academic journey, exchanging political influences for educational choices, alongside personal stories that reveal his relationships in academia. The discussion highlights the cultural shifts that fostered modern linguistic thought.

In this interview, we talk to Christopher Hutton about linguistic scholarship under National Socialism and how this relates to linguistics today. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 22 Primary Sources Boas, Franz (1911), Handbook of American Indian languages, vol. 1, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40, Washington: Government Print Office. Boas, Franz (1911), The mind of primitive man, New York: Macmillan. Fishman, Joshua (1964), Language maintenance and language shift as a field of inquiry, Linguistics 2: 32–70. Kloss, Heinz (1941), Brüder vor den Toren des Reiches. Vom volksdeutschen Schicksal, Berlin: Hochmuth. Mühlhausen, Ludwig (1939), Zehn irische Volkserzählungen aus Süd-Donegal, mit Übersetzung und Anmerkungen, Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Keltische Studien, Heft 3, Halle: Niemeyer. Philipson, Robert (1992), Linguistic imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sapir, Edward (1949), Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Schmidt-Rohr, Georg (1932), Die Sprache als Bildnerin der Völker. Eine Wesens- und Lebenskunde der Volkstümer, Jena: Diederichs. Schmidt-Rohr, Georg (1933), Mutter Sprache, Jena: Eugen Diederichs. Weinreich, Max (1946), Hitler’s professors: The part of scholarship in Germany’s crimes against the Jewish people, New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute – Yivo. Weinreich, Uriel (1953), Languages in contact: Findings and problems, New York: Publications of the Linguistic Circle of New York. Weisgerber, Johann Leo (1939), Die volkhaften Kräfte der Muttersprache, 2nd edition, Frankfurt: Diesterweg. Secondary Sources Burleigh, Michael (1988), Germany turns eastwards: A study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutton, Christopher (1999), Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue fascism, race and the science of language, London: Routledge. Hutton, Christopher (2005), Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, racial anthropology and genetics in the dialect of Volk, Cambridge: Polity. Knobloch, Clemens (2005), Volkhafte Sprachforschung, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Transcript [Music] JMc: Hi, I’m James McElvenny, and you’re listening to the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences Podcast, online at hiphilangsci.net. [00:19] There you can find links and references to all the literature we discuss. [00:23] In the most recent episodes, which have focused on central Europe in the first half of the 20th century, we’ve met a number of figures who were forced into exile by the rise of fascism. [00:33] In this episode, we turn our attention to those who stayed and found a place for themselves and their scholarship under the new regimes. [00:42] We also take a moment to consider the parallels between this period and today. [00:46] To guide us through these topics, we’re joined by Christopher Hutton, Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. [00:55] So, Chris, you’ve written extensively on the place of language study and anthropology in the so-called Third Reich. [01:02] Your publications on this topic include the 1999 book Linguistics in the Third Reich and the 2005 Race in the Third Reich. [01:12] Can you tell us what the main themes of Nazi language study were? [01:16] How did these themes differ from language study in the democratic countries of the time? [01:20] CH: I think you have to start in the ’20s and ’30s. [01:25] I mean, remember that Germany is really the centre of linguistics internationally, I would say — I mean, certainly historical linguistics — and then you have… [01:33] So you have quite a lot of continuity with international linguistics, but there is, I think, one, a particular feature, which is the centrality of this concept of Volk. [01:43] This is very different from, say, French or Anglo-American linguistics. [01:48] And then you have these ideas about mother tongue and discussions of bilingualism, language islands, Sprachinselforschung. [01:58] I think there is a contrast with what’s going on in France, and in the UK, and the US. [02:04] Of course, you do have in the US the Boasian tradition – Humboldt, Boas – but it’s focused mainly on indigenous cultures of North America, so it has this kind of niche, and in there, it’s a sort of rescue operation in some ways, and in some politically liberal. [02:20] Boas himself counts as a liberal, although there is a more complicated story there, actually. [02:26] If you think of Saussure’s langue, a concept — whatever you make of it — which is very free of some of the ideology that sticks to the German concepts of Volk and then language community and so on, it seems almost Cartesian in its abstractness, and I think that is very significant. [02:45] Saussure does have a reception in Germany, and, you know, there is structural linguistics, but it tends to be, the idea tends to be that, well, the conceptual structure of the language should have some basis in history, tradition, and so on. [03:00] So it’s very different from the Saussurean structuralism, which, if you take it puristically, is entirely synchronic, and language history is… [03:09] There is no real narrative you can make of the history of a language, in a sort of ideological “The story of language X.” [03:16] So I think there is a kind of continental sensibility because of the effect of World War I on the state boundaries, and there is a level of insecurity and uncertainty which, you know, doesn’t apply in the US and the UK, so I think that really, really makes a big difference. [03:37] I think, because German linguistics falls largely under Germanistik, which was an extremely conservative discipline, the people in Germanistik on the whole were on the right. [03:49] They didn’t necessarily become true Nazis, but they were certainly on the völkisch side, you know, as opposed to, say, sociology in Germany. [03:56] JMc: Can I just ask about what you said about Boas, that there’s a connection there with the German tradition but that Boas’ work was focused on American indigenous languages? [04:05] Do you think that there’s still a connection there, though, with how the Germans, the sort of German nationalists in Nazi Germany conceived of themselves? [04:15] Because if you go back into the 19th century, there’s a lot of sympathy, especially in German pop culture, you know, with the plight of indigenous people in America, like if you think of the novels of Karl May, for example. [04:27] There’s also this sort of German scholars’ fascination with like Tacitus’s descriptions of the Germanen and so on as a sort of indigenous people on the edge of civilization. [04:39] CH: I think it’s a very, very good point. [04:41] I mean, maybe you can look at it this way. [04:44] There’s hostility to the Anglo-American model of a state, as well as to the French model, and so these are seen as assimilatory and lacking a kind of organic basis, so they’re capitalist, you know, and based in law, you know, in some kind of Common Law, which is an individualistic system and promotes, in a way, a social movement and also sees property as something, as a resource to be exploited. [05:12] So I think, yes, I think that’s a really good point, and although Boas, you know, being Jewish and also politically liberal, ends up attacking the Nazis, there are parallels there, and you could put it under hostility to modernity, in a way. [05:25] I mean, Sapir has some of the same point, you know, the ideal, the Native American fishing in that tranquil way, free of the pressures of the modern industrialized world, the timetable, and so on. [05:37] I mean, it’s an attractive image to everybody, but I think this form of Romantic primitivism or whatever was very powerful in Germany, and it also spills over into Celtic studies, you know, and the affinity to Celtic music, culture, again, in opposition to this hostile Common Law English state, you know, colonial settler state which then threatens to obliterate diversity, you know. [06:05] It’s true that Common Law gobbles up diversity — look at Australia — because of the terra nullius doctrine, although once you’re inside the Common Law it may protect you, but if you’re faced with it coming at you, it’s actually really brutal. [06:17] I mean, they’d had a point, I think. [06:19] JMc: So on this point of Celtic studies, one of the major areas of applied linguistics that thrived under the National Socialist regime because it aligned very well with the regime’s interests was the issue of minority language rights. [06:33] This was very prominent in Celtic studies, as you mentioned. [06:37] So, first of all, in Germanistik, there was the issue of Auslandsdeutsche, so that is German speakers who were living outside the political boundaries of Germany — so predominantly in Eastern Europe, but also in migrant communities in North America, in the United States — but the issue of minority language rights was also deployed against the enemies of Nazi Germany — and this is where Celtic studies comes in — in alleged solidarity with oppressed ethnic groups such as the Bretons in France, the Welsh and the Highland Scots in Britain, and the Irish in Ireland. [07:10] So the Republic of Ireland was already an independent country by this stage, but the historical tensions between the Celtic-speaking Irish and the English colonial regime were still there, and Ireland itself was, of course, neutral in World War II. [07:25] But was this scholarship in Germanistik and Celtic studies really entwined with the Nazi ideology, or was it just an opportunistic appeal to the interests of the regime in order to secure funding and political support? [07:38] CH: Well, I think the affinity was sincere. [07:41] I mean, I think… There’s a guy called Ludwig Mühlhausen, there’s Leo Weisgerber, and there’s other figures, I think, Willy Krogmann. [07:50] So they really… I think they had very deep affinities to this Celtic culture, and they were very hostile to what the British had done or were doing in Ireland. [08:01] So I think there is a sincere element to it. [08:05] I think there is also an opportunistic element if you look at Heinz Kloss who was also, who was much more concerned with Germans, overseas Germans, or Germans outside the Reich, but he did get a lot of funding, [08:17] he had these independent research institutes. [08:20] Another way to look at this question is to look at the east, actually. [08:22] Michael Burleigh wrote a brilliant book called Germany Turns Eastwards, and it’s about the scholarship of the Slavic east, mainly Slavic east. [08:32] What you can see there, I think, is a mixture, in policy terms, of getting people on board — so appropriating, assimilating — and also kind of settler colonial ambitions. [08:43] So, you know, some Ukrainians are working with the Nazis, and then you have the Latvian SS, you have collaboration, but in the long run, I guess there was a plan, for the whole of Europe, a mixture of ethnic states in the west and settler colonialism in the east. [09:00] And how exactly that would have worked is unclear, but some people… [09:03] [Alfred] Rosenberg was saying to Hitler, you know, “The Ukrainians hate Stalin.” [09:06] But Hitler was, you know, not, you know… Because Rosenberg was from the east. [09:11] And I think Hitler was, on the other hand, much more insistent on a kind of scorched earth policy because of this settler ambition. [09:18] But they did have a European plan, and I think it did include a more natural ethnic ecology of Western Europe which would have been, I presume, ethnic states under Nazi sort of tutelage, so sort of patron states or… [09:32] I don’t know. [09:33] I think they didn’t know themselves, really. [09:36] And certainly, Leo Weisgerber was active in Brittany. [09:39] There was an attempt to use Flemish nationalism. [09:42] Certainly from the academics, I think they were sincerely interested because they distrust basically the modern state, nation-state form, because it’s not organic, but I think there is an overriding cynicism, you know, in the higher levels of the Nazi Party. [09:55] It wouldn’t have been a great deal for them in the end. [09:58] The ruthlessness of it is so, is such that the kind of autonomy they would have got would have been very, very thin. [10:05] So again, I think the idea of drawing clean lines is this, is underlying all of this, and the back to the sort of organic state, but they don’t have the intellectual answers, actually. [10:18] And then there’s the overriding technocratic thing of — which becomes stronger and stronger as the war goes on — of just brutal, you need a powerful military, and you need to… [10:27] You can’t, you know, this sort of re-engineering project is secondary, I think, at a certain point, you know, because it’s a brutal battle for survival. [10:35] But the academics, I think a lot of them are sincerely invested in these projects, so back to your original question, especially with the Celts, I think, yeah. [10:45] I think there’s a lot of affinities, and the academic links went back way before the war, and they still continue, actually. [10:51] There’s still a Celtic Romanticism in Germany. [10:54] It’s nothing like it was, but I noticed that when I lived in Germany, you know, there’s a kind of a… [11:01] There is this Romantic attachment to a particular form of Celtic imagery and way of being as opposed to the kind of hard capitalist modernity of England or the US. [11:14] So I think that ethos remains — stripped, I should add, of its nasty toxic elements. [11:22] JMc: Okay, so that brings us to the present. [11:25] So minority language rights are, of course, a major issue in mainstream linguistics today, but the focus today is perhaps on indigenous languages in places that have been subject to settler colonialism such as North and South America and Australia, so that sort of project that Boas was engaged in back in these days. [11:42] But also in Britain and France, the rights of speakers of Celtic languages are very much on the agenda and have managed to win some government support, and even in Germany, some small minorities such as the Sorbs in the Lausitz, in Brandenburg and Saxony, who speak a Slavic language, have been able to gain official support. [12:02] But today, minority language rights are usually considered a progressive issue, an effort to counteract the deleterious effects of colonialism and the aggressive spread of hegemonic cultures. [12:15] So how can an issue like this have such different, even diametrically opposed, political associations in different historical contexts? [12:23] CH: I think one of the keys to this is that the language minority politics of Europe between the wars and into the war is about territory. [12:35] So if you… [12:37] So the whole tension underlying it is, “Whose territory is this?” [12:41] And basically — back to the organic state — if you want to consolidate and survive and not to lose parts of your Volk, then it seems that you need political power in those regions in order to protect that. [12:56] So, obviously, the Germans are hurting because they’ve lost a lot of territory and a lot of their speakers are now citizens of other states, so the whole issue is explosive at the level where people are going to be killed with this, to, in a way, to bring about this kind of ideal state, you’re going to have to move people or kill them. [13:15] So it’s very different from the sort of post-war US where it’s about, an argument about cultural space or about legitimacy or, you know, access to social mobility, and so there’s no underlying murderous potential to that. [13:31] There’s a lot of social tension around it. [13:33] So I think that’s one difference. [13:36] I think that sociolinguistics has suffered from a sort of single model of this, so if you say “mother tongue language rights”, everyone goes, “Great,” rather than, really… [13:47] You know, language politics should include politics, so if you look at the politics of these states, and then it becomes a much more muddled and complicated story, so, you know, I always thought, you know… [14:00] [Robert] Philipson would go around the world telling everyone to use their mother tongues, but they did it in English, of course, and in a way, it was a one-size-fits-all solution emanating from northern Europe. [14:10] So my problem, in a way, is that we don’t look enough at the actual politics, the real governmental system, the structures, the resourcing, and all the effects that we’re, so people can praise, you know, pat themselves on the back for saying, “I support language rights,” but they don’t actually cost it in any way, politically or economically. [14:29] Maybe it’s the problem with the identity left now that it’s not interested in economics. [14:35] Somehow it lost… [14:37] You know, when I was growing up or when I was young, Marxists and leftists would talk about economics all the time. [14:42] Now, they only talk about identity, and it seems to me this is a problem for sociolinguistics. [14:48] I think it’s good, you know, it’s obviously progressive and better… [14:53] You know, if you have a, like say Welsh. [14:54] Well, Welsh is now enjoying a degree of, quite a strong degree of official recognition, and that’s great. [15:00] I don’t see any problem, and I think this can keep going further. [15:05] I mean, every Welsh, every speaker of Welsh is a native speaker of English as well, so it’s a very unusual situation, and I think that’s really beneficial to the kind of possibilities of this situation. [15:18] But in other situations, people are on the, you know, on the edge of these modern states, like in South America. [15:24] I don’t know. [15:26] I mean, it’s very easy to sit here and go, “They should keep their languages and cultures,” but modernity is a brutal… [15:32] I mean, the Welsh are in modernity, and then, you know, whereas for, say, in Brazil or these Amazonian peoples, getting into modernity will destroy their cultures. [15:44] I don’t see any easy point of view from here. [15:48] Again, another huge block of states are the Leninist states or the former Leninist states, you know, which is, you know, a vast percentage of the world population – so China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma to a degree, and even India, in a funny way – where you have official minority classifications centrally organized, and the politics of that are very, very different from the minority policies of that from, say, the US. [16:17] Both Uriel Weinrich and [Joshua] Fishman in the ’50s and ’60s have a whole list of Nazis in their references. [16:24] I mean, not one or two, maybe 20 or 25. [16:28] So how is that possible? [16:30] You know, and Weinrich’s Languages in Contact, if you look in the bibliography, there’s a bunch of really nasty, toxic people there, you know, some of whom, one of whom was executed for war crimes. [16:42] So how is that possible? [16:44] It’s because, well, one, I think in Fishman’s case, he just was not interested in the problematic nature of minority politics in the interwar era, and he didn’t understand Kloss, who was his kind of, you know, close collaborator, and he was worried about protecting the program that he had, which was to promote, you know, ethnic revival in the US and globally in the sort of decolonizing world, a kind of rational language politics or language engineering. [17:15] JMc: But maybe, I mean, maybe your average sociolinguist who, so someone like Weinreich or Fishman who would be citing heaps of Nazis, maybe their principle would be, you know, don’t say that they’re hypocritical, [17:26] say rather that they’re apolitical, like that the ideas that they have are separate from the politics that they were used to support. [17:35] CH: Well, my theory with Weinreich was that he was trying to protect the discipline, and he did his fieldwork in Switzerland, so he was in the kind of only bit of Europe which was not damaged [17:45], you know continental Europe which was kind of intact in some sense, and I think he was such a sort of straight guy and a high-minded guy that I think he felt it beneath him to kind of lay into these guys. [17:59] But I pointed out in this article, Max, his father, wrote one of the first books on Nazi scholarship and was scathing in a letter quoted by another scholar about Franz Beranek, who was one of the Germans who worked on Yiddish, you know, so calling him complicit in murder and so on. [18:15] So there is something strange about that, and Fishman, I think, was protecting… [18:21] Or maybe he didn’t know. [18:22] I don’t know whether Weinreich gave him the references. [18:25] He certainly knew about [Georg] Schmidt-Rohr, you know, Schmidt-Rohr’s complicated evolution, because in ’32 Schmidt-Rohr got into political trouble for seemingly suggesting that language could create Volk, and then he kind of reoriented himself to kind of get past the sort of Nordicist attacks on him. [18:45] But he’s no liberal, you know. [18:48] And then Kloss, with Fishman, it’s a funny story, actually. [18:51] I think that all fades away. [18:54] I mean, no one’s… [18:55] After this, I think Fishman, it all kind of dribbles out and he doesn’t cite any more German sources. Again, noting that, because German language sources were the key to the history of linguistics, I mean, until the Second World War, right? [19:08] So in a way, it’s mapping the end of German dominance and the rise of the US as the preeminent linguistics power, I guess, yeah. [19:18] JMc: What a claim to fame, preeminent linguistics power. [19:23] It’s not quite as impressive as being, you know, the greatest military power or economic power. [19:27] CH: True, but, I mean, I think… [19:28] Yeah, but it goes together a little bit because look at the US university system, and then because of the ’60s expansion, it really took off, and sociolinguistics has a kind of virgin birth, I think, in the ’60s, they kind of, as if there never was a European background, you know. [19:47] There’s something slightly odd about it, and Kloss is there in those, one or two of those meetings, you know, with [Dell] Hymes and all these, [John J.] Gumperz, all these figures. [19:55] And there’s the, because there’s the Empire, the British Empire, which was a key place for linguistics research, and then there’s, you know, Central and Eastern Europe. [20:05] You know, the massive amount of literature on the ethnic politics of eastern, but then sociolinguistics comes along, it’s a very US thing. [20:12] It’s like, “We’re going forward,” technocratic, and then rights and equality, and so it kind of sets itself going, I think, often without really looking back. [20:24] JMc: Okay. [20:26] Oh, that’s probably a good note to end the interview on, so thank you very much for your answers to those questions. [20:31] CH: Okay, thanks very much. [20:33] JMc: Okay. [20:34] CH: It was good fun. [20:34] I enjoyed that. [20:35] [Music]

In this episode, we look at psychologist Karl Bühler’s (1879–1963) Organon model of communication and observe its influence on the linguists Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890–1938) and Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), who were associated with the Prague Circle. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 21 Primary Sources Bühler, Karl (1927), Die Krise der Psychologie, Jena: Fischer. Bühler, Karl (1931), ‘Phonetik und Phonologie’, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4, 22–53. MPI PuRe (last page of scan missing) Bühler, Karl (1933), Axiomatik der Sprachwissenschaften, Frankfurt: Klostermann.(English trans., The Axiomatization of the Language Sciences, in Innis 1982.) Bühler, Karl (1934), Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena: Fischer. MPI PuRe: 1965 edition(English trans.: 2011, Theory of Language, trans. Donald Fraser Goodwin, ed. Achim Eschbach, Amsterdam: Benjamins.) Bühler, Karl (1960), Das Gestaltprinzip im Leben des Menschen und der Tiere, Bern: Huber. Durnovo, Nikolaj, Bohuslav Havránek, Roman Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius, Jan Mukařovský, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, & Bohumil Trnka (1929), ‘Thèses présentées au Premier Congrès des philologues slaves’, in Mélanges linguistiques dédiés au Premier Congrès des Philologues Slaves, pp. 5–29. Praha: Jednota Československých Matematiků a Fysiků. BnF Gallica(English trans. by Marta K. Johnson, 1978, ‘Manifesto’, in Recycling the Prague Linguistic Circle, ed. Marta K. Johson, pp. 1–31. Anne Arbor: Karoma.) Gardiner, Alan Henderson (1932), Theory of Speech and Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. archive.org Jakobson, Roman (1981 [1960]), ‘Poetry and grammar’, in Selected Writings: Roman Jakobson, vol. III, Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry, 18–51, The Hague: Mouton.(An abridged version with the title ‘The speech event and the functions of language’ is reproduced in Jakobson 1990, pp. 69–79.) Jakobson, Roman (1990 [1960]), ‘Linguistics and Communication Theory’, in Jakobson (1990), pp. 489–497. Martinet, André (1980 [1949]), Éléments de linguistique générale, Paris: Armin Colin. archive.org Shannon, Claude & Warren Weaver (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. MPI PuRe: 1964 edition Trubetzkoy, Nikolai (1939), Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague.(English trans. by Christiane A.M. Baltaxe, 1969, Principles of Phonology. Berkeley: University of California Press. archive.org) Secondary Sources Ash, Mitchell G. (1995), Gestalt psychology in German culture, 1890–1967: Holism and the quest for objectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benetka, Gerhard (1995), Psychologie in Wien: Sozial- und Theoriegeschichte des Wiener Psychologischen Instituts 1922–1938, Wien: WUV-Universtätsverlag. Edwards, Paul N. (1997), The Closed World: Computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Eschbach, Achim, ed. (1984), Bühler-Studien, 2 vols., Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Friedrich, Janette (2004), ‘Les idées phonologiques de Karl Bühler’, Les dossiers de HEL No. 2, ed. Janette Friedrich & Didier Samain, Paris: SHESL. https://shesl.org/index.php/dossiers2-karl_buhler/ Friedrich, Janette, ed. (2018), Karl Bühlers Krise der Psychologie: Positionen, Bezüge und Kontroversen in Wien der 1920er/30er Jahre, Cham: Springer. Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius (2011), ‘From information theory to French theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss and the cybernetic apparatus’, Critical Enquiry 38: 96–126. Innis, Robert E. (1982), Karl Bühler, semiotic foundations of language theory, New York: Plenum Press. Jakobson, Roman (1990), On Language, ed. Linda R. Waugh & Monique Monville-Burston, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ungeheuer, Gerold (2004 [1967]), ‘Die kybernetische Grundlage der Sprachtheorie von Karl Bühler’, in Sprache und Kommunikation, ed. Karin Kolb & H. Walter Schmitz, 128–146, Münster: Nodus. Van de Walle, Jürgen (2008), ‘Roman Jakobson, cybernetics and information theory: a critical assessment’, Folia Linguistica Historica 29: 87–128.

In this interview, we continue the theme of the previous episode and talk to Jacqueline Léon about John Rupert Firth (1890–1960), Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942) and the London School. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 20 Primary Sources Archives Firth : John Rupert Firth collection, PP MS75, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Biber, D. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Brown, K. & Law V. (eds.), 2002, Linguistics in Britain: Personal Histories, Oxford: Publications of the Philological Society. Firth, J. R. 1930. Speech. London: Benn’s Sixpenny Library. Firth, J. R. 1957 [1935]. “The technique of semantics”, in Papers in Linguistics (1934–1951). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 7–33. Firth, J. R. 1970 [1937]. The Tongues of Men. London: Oxford University Press, Firth, J. R. 1957 [1950]. “Personality and language in society”, in Papers in Linguistics (1934–1951). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 177–189. Firth, J. R. 1957 [1951]. “General Linguistics and Descriptive Grammar”, in Papers in Linguistics (1934–1951), pp. 216–228. Firth, J. R. 1968 [1956]. “Descriptive linguistics and the study of English”, in Palmer F. R. (ed.), pp. 96–113. Firth, J. R. 1968 [1957a].“Ethnographic analysis and language with reference to Malinowski’s views”, in Palmer F. R. (ed.), Selected papers of J.R. Firth (1952–59). London and Bloomington: Longman and Indiana University Press, pp. 137–67. Firth, J. R. [posthumus manuscript 1]. Conference on University training and research in the use of English as a second / foreign language, British Council 15–17 December 1960 [J. R. Firth collection, SOAS, London, PP MS 75, box 2] Firth, J. R. [posthumus manuscript 2]. October 1960 Commonwealth Conference of the teaching of English as a second language, Makerere, Uganda, January 1961 [J. R. Firth collection, SOAS, London, Personal File]. Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D. 1972. Directions in sociolinguistics, The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston. Halliday, M. A. K. 1966. “General linguistics and its application to language teaching”, in M. A. K. Halliday and A. McIntosh (eds.), Patterns of Language: Papers in General, Descriptive and Applied Linguistics. London: Longman, pp. 1–41. Halliday, M. A. K., McIntosh A. & Strevens P. 1964. The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching. London, Longmans. Hymes, D. 1964. Language in Culture and Society. A reader in Linguistics and Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row. Malinowski, B. 1923. “The problem of meaning in primitive languages”, Supplement to Ogden C. K. & Richards I. A., The Meaning of Meaning. A study of the influence of Language upon Thought and of the science of symbolism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 296–337. Malinowski, B. 1935. Coral Gardens and their Magic, The Language of Magic and Gardening, vol. II. London: Allen & Unwin. Malinowski, B. 1937. “The Dilemma of Contemporary Linguistics,” review of: Infant Speech: a Study of the Beginnings of Language, by M. M. Lewis, Nature 140: 172–173. Mitchell T. F. 1975. Principles of Firthian Linguistics. London: Longman. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. & Jefferson, G. 1974. “A simplest systematics from the organization of turn taking for conversation”, Language 50: 696-735. Sweet, H. 1891–98. A New English Grammar: Logical and Historical, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, H. 1891. The Practical Study of languages: A guide for teachers and learners. Oxford : Oxford University Press. (Reprinted in 1964 by R. Mackin.) Secondary Sources Howatt A. P. R. 1984. History of English Language Teaching [2nd edition, 2004]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Léon, J. 2007. “From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian legacy and Corpus Linguistics”, The Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas 49: 5–26. Léon J. 2008. “Empirical traditions of computer-based methods. Firth’s restricted languages and Harris’ sublanguages”, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 18.2: 259–274. Léon J. 2011. “De la linguistique descriptive à la linguistique appliquée dans la tradition britannique. Sweet, Firth et Halliday”, Histoire Epistémologie Langage 33.1: 69–81. Léon J. 2019. “Les sources britanniques de l’ethnographie de la communication et de l’analyse de conversation. Bronislaw Malinowski et John Rupert Firth”, Linha d’Agua 32.1: 23–38. Palmer, F. R. 1994. “Firth and the London School”, The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Asher (ed.). Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 1257–1260. Rebori, V. 2002. “The legacy of J.R. Firth. A report on recent research”, Historiographia Linguistica 29.1–2:165–190. Stubbs, M. 1992. “InstitutionaI Linguistics: Language and Institutions, Linguistics and Sociology”, in Pütz, M. (ed.), Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 189–21. Transcript by Luca Dinu [Music] JMc: Hi, [00:10] I’m James McElvenny, and you’re listening to the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences Podcast, online at hiphilangsci.net. [00:18] In the previous episode, we became acquainted with the functionalist approach to language research of the London School of linguistics, whose institutional figurehead was John Rupert Firth, and which had many links outside disciplinary linguistics, perhaps most notably to the ethnographic work of Bronisław Malinowski. [00:38] Today, we explore this topic in more detail with Jacqueline Léon, from the CNRS Laboratory for the History of Linguistic Theories in Paris. [00:49] Jacqueline is the author of numerous papers and books on the London School and on British and American linguistics more broadly. [00:56] References to her most relevant publications on these topics, and to all the other literature we discuss, can be found, as always, up on the podcast page at hiphilangsci.net. [01:07] In the previous episode, we talked at length about the notion of “context of situation”. [01:13] You’ve argued, Jacqueline, that this concept represents a kind of anticipation of ideas that were later reinvented or rediscovered under the rubrics of ethnography of communication and conversation analysis. [01:26] What exactly are the common points between Firthian linguistics and these later approaches? [01:32] And are there direct historical connections between them or were the later ideas developed independently? [01:38] JL: One can say that there is a direct connection between Firth and Malinowski’s ideas and ethnography of communication, since its pioneers, Dell Hymes and John Gumperz, consider Malinowski and Firth among the notable sources of the field. [01:58] In his introductory book to ethnographic communication, Language in Culture and Society, published in 1964, Hymes reproduces the second part of Firth’s text “The technique of semantics” of 1935 under the title of “Sociological linguistics”. [02:22] Remember that, in that text, Firth starts to elaborate the notion of context of situation in the wake of Malinowski. [02:31] In the same book, Hymes also reproduces a text by Malinowski of 1937 called “The Dilemma of Contemporary Linguistics”. [02:43] Later, in their introductory book Directions in Sociolinguistics, The Ethnography of Communication, published in 1972, Hymes and Gumperz underline what dialectology and variation studies owe to Firth, in particular with the notions of context of situation, speech community, and verbal repertories, and how their notion of frame comes from the functional categories of the context of situation. [03:18] They also claim their affiliation to Firth’s article “Personality and language in society”, published in 1950. [03:27] As to conversation analysis, the connection is less direct: Sacks and Schegloff, the pioneers of conversation analysis, never quote Firth or Malinowski. [03:40] However, they both refer to Hymes, and Sacks is one of the authors of Directions in Sociolinguistics, edited by Hymes and Gumperz in 1972, so that one can claim that they were acquainted with Firth’s and Malinowski’s works. [04:00] Now, let’s look into this in more details. [04:04] In the previous episode, you, James, talked about Malinowski’s and Firth’s context of situation and their conception of language as a mode of action. [04:16] In Coral Gardens and their Magic, Malinowski’s context of situation includes not only linguistic context but also gestures, looks, facial expressions and perceptual context. [04:34] More broadly, context of situation is identified with the cultural context comprising all the people participating in the activity, as well as the physical and social environment. [04:50] In other words, context of situation is the nonverbal matrix of speech event. [04:57] Malinowski gives words the power to act, that is to say, long before Austin’s How to Do Things with Words (published in 1955 then 1962), he says, Malinowski, “words in their first and essential sense do, act, produce and realize.” [05:22] As to Firth, as early as 1935, in “The technique of semantics”, he emphasizes the importance of conversation for the study of language. [05:37] I quote: “Conversation is much more of a roughly prescribed ritual than most people think. [05:44] Once someone speaks to you, you are in a relatively determined context and you are not free just to say what you please. [05:54] … Neither linguists nor psychologists have begun the study of conversation; but it is here that we shall find the key to a better understanding of what language really is and how it works.” [06:09] End of quotation. [06:11] In this text, Firth presents a linguistic treatment of the context of situation. [06:18] He groups the contexts by type of use and by genres. [06:22] First: common, colloquial, slang, literary, technical, scientific, conversational, dialectal. [06:31] Two: speaking, hearing, writing, reading. [06:35] Three (sort of registers; we’ll see that later): familiar, colloquial, and more formal speech. [06:42] Four: the languages of the schools, the law, the Church, and the specialized forms of speech. [06:49] These categories are the premises of what he will develop with restricted languages from 1945. [06:58] To these types of monological uses, Firth adds those created by the interactions between several people where the function of phatic communion identified by Malinowski is at work. [07:14] The examples he gives are acts of ordinary conversation, such as addresses, greetings, mutual recognition, etc., or belong to institutions like the Church, the tribunal, the administration, where words are deeds. [07:32] I quote again Firth: “In more detail we may notice such common situations as: (a) Address: ‘Simpson!’ ‘Look here, Jones’, ‘My dear boy’, ‘Now, my man’, ‘Excuse me, madam’. [07:47] (b) Greetings, farewells, or mutual recognition of status and relationship on contact, adjustment of relations after contact, breaking off relations, renewal of relations, change of relations. [08:02] (c) Situations in which words, often conventionally fixed by law or custom, serve to bind people to a line of action or to free them from certain customary duties in order to impose others. [08:19] In Churches, Law Courts, Offices, such situations are commonplace.” [08:26] End of quotation. [08:29] However, the notion of situation, and the classification of these situations, seemed to him insufficient to account for language as action. [08:40] Instead, he proposes linguistic functions reduced to linguistic expressions: he speaks of the language of agreement, of disagreement, encouragement, approval, condemnation; the action of wishing, blessing, cursing, boasting; the language of challenge, flattery, seduction, compliments, blame, propaganda and persuasion. [09:06] Here, we can recognize the first objects studied by the first conversation analysts in their research on talk-in-interaction, that is, greetings, compliments, agreement and disagreement, etc. [09:20] In The Tongues of Men, published in 1937, two years after “The technique of semantics”, appears what was later formalized as turn-taking organization and action sequences by the conversation analysts. [09:39] Firth evokes the mutual expectations aroused in the interlocutors as well as the limited range of possibilities of responses to a given turn. [09:52] As for the notions relating to language variation, which will prove to be very important for ethnographers of communication, they were developed by Firth from 1950. [10:03] James, you have already mentioned specialized languages and Firth’s personal experience of teaching Japanese to pilots during the Second World War. [10:12] These specialized languages will become restricted languages a few years later. [10:20] For Firth, even restricted languages are affected by variation and context. [10:26] Even in the restricted languages of meteo [weather] or mathematics, which can nevertheless be regarded as extremely constrained, there are dramatic variations according to the languages and to the continents where they are used. [10:42] In Firth’s last paper, of 1959, we come across the idea of repertory, according to which each person is in command of a varied repertory of language roles, of a constellation of restricted languages. [11:00] The notion of repertory was developed by ethnographers of communication as crucial for the study of variation. [11:08] With this ultimate paper, where restricted languages refer to speakers’ repertories of their own, it can be claimed that Firth gave the outline of the notion of register later developed by his followers, especially Michael Halliday, Angus McIntosh and Paul Strevens in their book The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching, published in 1964. [11:36] At first, they worked out the notion of register to address the issue of language variety in connection with foreign language teaching. [11:46] Linguistic variety should be studied through two distinct notions, dialect and register, to account for linguistic events (Firth’s term to designate the linguistic activity of people in situations). [12:04] They oppose dialect (that is, variety according to user; that is, varieties in the sense that each speaker uses one variety and uses it all the time) to register (that is, variety according to use; that is, in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and chooses between them at different times). [12:32] The category of “register” refers to the type of language selected by a speaker as appropriate to different types of situations. [12:44] Within this framework, restricted languages are referred as specific, constrained types of registers which, I quote, “employ only a limited number of formal items and patterns.” [13:00] It should be added that the authors (that is, Halliday et al.) refer to Ferguson and Gumperz’s work on Linguistic diversity in South Asia, Weinreich’s Languages in Contact and Quirk’s Use of English, in addition to Firth’s work, so that it should be said that registers had not been the direct successors of restricted languages. [13:29] They have been established on Firthian views already revisited by Hymes and Gumperz, and then by Halliday and his colleagues. [13:41] In conclusion, one can claim that Firth’s context of situation, linguistic events, restricted languages, and repertories raised crucial issues for early sociolinguistics. [13:56] JMc: So Firthian linguistics would seem to have a very pragmatic and applied character. [14:02] What’s the relationship of Firthian theory to what the British call “applied linguistics”? [14:07] And how does this relate to the Firthian notion of “restricted languages”, which you just mentioned in your answer to the previous question? [14:16] JL: To answer this question, I must recall that there is a specific tradition of applied linguistics coming from British empiricism, which, since the 19th century, has been resting on the articulation between theory, practice and applications based on technological innovations. [14:39] Firth played an important role in the development of practical and applied linguistics, which became institutionalized only after his death, in the 1950–60s, with two pioneering trends, in the US and in Britain. [14:59] Michael Halliday, one of his most famous pupils, was one of the founders of the AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée) in 1964, and of BAAL, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, in 1967. [15:18] Henry Sweet was probably the 19th-century linguist who best exemplified the establishment of close links between application and linguistics. [15:29] Firth was a big admirer of Sweet (in particular, he mentions having learned his shorthand method at 14) and is in line with Sweet’s “living philology” in several ways: the priority given to phonetics in the description of languages, the attention paid to text and phonetics, the absence of distinction between practical grammar and theoretical grammar, the important place of descriptive grammar, finally, the involvement in language teaching. [16:05] In this last area, Sweet advocated the use of texts written in a simple and direct style, containing only frequent words, instead of learning by heart lists of isolated words or sentences, which was the usual way of teaching languages in his time. [16:28] These texts (which he called “connected coherent texts”) recall the restricted languages that Firth will recommend later for language teaching and also for all kinds of applications, such as translation and the study of collocations. [16:48] Firth developed restricted language in 1956 (in his article entitled “Descriptive linguistics and the study of English”), even if the idea of specialized language appeared as soon as 1950. [17:06] Firth’s major concern was then to set up the crucial status of descriptive linguistics, against Saussurian and Neo-Bloomfieldian structural linguistics. [17:19] Restricted languages were a way to question the monosystemic view of language shared by European structuralists (especially Meillet’s view of language as a one-system whole où tout se tient), and to criticize pointless discussions on metalanguage. [17:40] Restricted languages are at the core of his conception of descriptive linguistics, where practical applications are guided by theory. [17:50] Firth developed restricted languages according to three levels, “language under description”, “language of description”, “language of translation”, each of them determining a step in the description process. [18:10] The language under description is the raw material observed, transcribed in the form of “text” located contextually. [18:20] From a methodological point of view, restricted languages under description should be authentic texts – that is, written texts or the transcription of the raw empirical material. [18:35] They may be materialized in a single text, such as Magna Carta in Medieval Latin, or the American Declaration of Independence. [18:48] The language of description corresponds to linguistic terminology and transcription systems – we must know that Firth rejected metalanguage. [19:00] Finally, the translation language includes the source and target languages, and the definition languages of dictionaries and grammars. [19:15] Firth insists that restricted languages are more suited than general language for carrying out practical purposes, such as teaching languages, translating, or building dictionaries, and, we’ll see, to study collocations. [19:32] Likewise, defined as limited types of a major language, for example subsets of English, contextually situated, they are the privileged object of descriptive linguistics. [19:46] The task of descriptive linguistics, he said, is not to study the language as a whole, but to study restricted, more manageable languages, which should have their own grammar and dictionary, which he called micro-grammar and micro-glossary. [20:05] Firth uses the phrase “the restricted language of X” in order to address the different types of restricted languages: the restricted language of science, technology, sport, defense, industry, aviation, military services, commerce, law and civil administration, politics, literature, etc. [20:25] Firth died in 1960, the year of decolonization in Africa, also called “the year of Africa”. [20:34] His last two texts are posthumous speeches at two congresses, organized respectively by the British Council and the Commonwealth on the teaching of English as a foreign language and as a second language in the former colonies. [20:52] The research on restricted languages initiated by Firth is a central theme addressed in these lectures, under the title “English for special purposes”, and it is the Neo-Firthians, as his followers are sometimes called, including Michael Halliday, who expressed themselves on these questions. [21:16] JMc: Thank you very much for your very detailed answers to these questions. [21:22] JL: Thank you. [21:22] [Music]

John Rupert Firth, a key figure in British linguistics, and Bronisław Malinowski, a famed anthropologist, dive into the evolution of meaning in language. They discuss Firth's 'context of situation' theory and its empirical approach, contrasting it with German perspectives. Malinowski explores 'word magic' and the societal power of language, critiquing colonial biases and emphasizing cultural contexts. Their conversation reflects on how language shapes rational thought, political discourse, and the nuances of effective communication.

H. Walter Schmitz, a scholar in language sciences, dives into the groundbreaking work of Victoria Lady Welby, a trailblazer in semiotics. He explores her practical approach to meaning, her struggle for education as a woman in the late 19th century, and her compelling correspondence with influential thinkers. The conversation delves into the distinctions between sense, meaning, and significance in communication, while comparing Welby’s semiotic theories with those of Charles Peirce, highlighting her enduring impact on modern semiotics.

Philipp Wegener, a key figure in the early development of functional linguistics, shares his groundbreaking ideas on language as a dynamic action rather than a simple reflection of thought. He dives into how language directs attention and shapes communication, emphasizing the importance of shared cultural contexts and consciousness in interpreting meaning. Wegener critiques traditional psychological theories and discusses the intricate relationship between language and psychological understanding, ultimately highlighting the evolution of linguistic concepts.

Chloé Laplantine, a scholar of linguistics and author, delves into the life of pioneering French structuralist Émile Benveniste. She discusses his revolutionary contributions to language theory and critiques of Saussure's structuralism, highlighting the dynamic relationship between language and society. Laplantine also emphasizes the importance of individual experience in linguistic analysis, presenting Benveniste as a transformative figure who reshaped our understanding of linguistic structures and their cultural implications.

In this fascinating discussion, linguistic pioneers Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy delve into the groundbreaking contributions of the Prague Linguistic Circle. They explore the evolution of the phoneme, showcasing its pivotal role in modern phonology. The conversation highlights the intriguing interplay between structuralism, Gestalt psychology, and the arts, revealing how melody in music parallels language theory. Jakobson’s insights into avant-garde influences and his intellectual journey during WWII add depth to their transformative legacy.

Michael Ashby, a renowned expert in phonetics, discusses the fascinating evolution of phonetics in the 19th century. He highlights the interplay between linguistics, physiology, and emerging recording technologies that transformed the field. Key inventions like the phonautograph and phonograph reshaped phonetic scholarship, making it more empirical. Ashby also covers the establishment of the International Phonetic Association and its focus on linguistic reforms, emphasizing the challenges and cultural biases faced in creating a universal phonetic alphabet.