History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences

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.

John Joseph, a renowned expert on Ferdinand de Saussure, shares insights into Saussure's profound impact on structuralism and modern linguistics. He discusses how Saussure's minimalist model redefined the relationship between language and identity. The conversation also touches on the critiques of Saussure's theories, particularly regarding their social context. Joseph highlights the innovative aspects of Saussure's teachings and explores his lasting legacy, contrasting his ideas with those of contemporaneous theorists, revealing a rich tapestry of linguistic history.

In this episode, we look at Ferdinand de Saussure’s contributions to linguistics, which are widely considered to be foundational to the later movement of structuralism. https://hiphilangsci.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/hiphilangsci_012_epi.mp3 Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Archive DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4767891 References for Episode 12 Primary Sources Bloomfield, Leonard (1924), Review of Saussure (1922), Modern Language Journal 8, 317–319. DOI: 10.2307/313991 Bréal, Michel (1897), Essai de sémantique (science des significations), Paris: Hachette. archive.org (Engl. trans.: (1900), Semantics: Studies in the science of meaning, trans. by Nina Cust, London: Heinemann. archive.org) Brugman, Karl (1876), ‘Nasalis sonans in der indogermanischen Grundsprache’, Studien zur griechischen und lateinischen Grammatik 9: 285–338. archive.org Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1927), ‘ə indo-européen et h hittite’, in Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski, vol. I, Krakow: Gebethner & Wolff, pp. 95–104. Möller, Hermann (1880), Review of F. Kluge, Beiträge zur Geschichte der germanischen Conjugation, Straßburg: K. J. Trübner (1879), Englische Studien 3: 148–164. archive.org Paul, Hermann (1920 [1880]), Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, Halle an der Saale: Niemeyer. archive.org (English trans.: (1891), Principles of the history of language, trans. H. A. Strong, London: Longmans, Green and co. archive.org) Saussure, Ferdinand de (1879), Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes, Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. archive.org Saussure, Ferdinand de (1922 [1916]), Cours de linguistique générale, ed. by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, Paris: Payot. 3rd edition, 1931: BNF Gallica (English translation: Ferdinand de Saussure, 1959 [1916], Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library. 2011 edition available from archive.org) Secondary Sources Joseph, John E. (2012), Saussure, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Joseph, John E. (2017), ‘Ferdinand de Saussure’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.385 Koerner, E.F. Konrad (2008), ‘Hermann Paul and general linguistic theory’, Language Sciences 30: 102–132. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2006.10.001

In this interview, we talk to Floris Solleveld about the character of linguistic research in the 19th century. https://hiphilangsci.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/hiphilangsci_011_intx.mp3 Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Archive DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4767978 References for Episode 11 Primary Sources Adelung, Johann Christoph and Johann Severin Vater (1806–1817), Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde, Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung. archive.org: vol. I, vol. II, vol. III parts I and II, vol. III part III, vol. IV Balbi, Adriano (1826), Atlas ethnographique du Globe, Paris: Rey. Google Books: Introduction, archive.org: Atlas Bleek, Wilhelm (1858–1859), The library of His Excellency Sir George Grey K.C.B.: Philology, London: Trübner & co. Google Books: Vol. I, Vol. II Boas, Franz (1940), Race, Language, and Culture, New York: Macmillan. archive.org Du Ponceau, Peter Stephen (1838), Mémoire sur le système grammatical des langues de quelques nations Indiennes de l’Amerique du Nord, Paris: Pihan de la Forest. Google Books Grierson, George (1903–1926), The Linguistic Survey of India, 11 in 20 vols, Calcutta: Govt. Printing House. University of Chicago Haeckel, Ernst (1868), Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte: Gemeinverständliche wissenschaftliche Vorträge über die Entwickelungslehre im Allgemeinen und diejenige von Darwin, Goethe, und Lamarck im Besonderen […], Berlin: Reimer. Google Books Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo (1787), Vocabolario poliglotto, con prolegomeni sopra più de CL lingue, Cesena: Biasini. Google Books Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo (1787), Saggio practicco delle Lingue con prolegomeni e una raccolta di orazioni dominicali in più di trecento lingue e dialetti, Cesena: Biasini. Google Books Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1836), ‘Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues’, Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java, vol. 1, ed. Alexander von Humboldt, Berlin: Dümmler. archive.org (English trans. On Language. The diversity of human language structure and ist influence on the mental development of mankind [1988], trans. Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) Klaproth, Julius (1823), Asia polyglotta, Paris: Schubart. archive.org: \Text, Atlas Koelle, Sigismund (1854), Polyglotta Africana, London: Church Missionary House. Lepsius, C. R. (1854), Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet: Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in europäische Buchstaben, Berlin: Hertz. archive.org (Lepsius, C. R. (1863), Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, 2nd rev. edn. London: Williams & Norgate. archive.org) Marsden, William (1782), “Remarks on the Sumatran Languages. In a Letter to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. President of the Royal Society”, Archaeologia VI: 154-158. Marsden, William (1827), Bibliotheca Marsdeniana philologica et orientalis: A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts, Collected with a View to the General Comparison of Languages, and to the Study of Oriental Literature, London: Cox. archive.org Müller, Friedrich (1876–1888), Grundriß der Sprachwissenschaft, 4 vols. Vienna: Hölder. Google Books: Vol. I Raffles, Thomas Stamford (1830 [1817]), The History of Java, 2 vols. London: Murray et al. archive.org: Vol. I, Vol. II Schlegel, Friedrich (1808), Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer. archive.org (English trans. ‘On the Indian Language, Literature and Philosophy’ [1900], The Æsthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Friedrich von Schlegel, ed. and trans. E. J. Millington, pp. 425–536, London: George Bell and Sons. archive.org) Schmidt, Wilhelm (1919), Die Gliederung der australischen Sprachen, Vienna: Mechitaristen-Verlag. Schmidt, Wilhelm (1926), Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde, 1+1 vols, Heidelberg: Winter. archive.org: Atlas Schmidt, Wilhelm (1927), Rasse und Volk. Eine Untersuchung zur Bestimmung ihrer Grenzen und zur Erfassung ihrer Beziehungen, München: Kösel & Pustet. [2nd ed., 1935, Rasse und Volk. Ihre allgemeine Bedeutung, ihre Geltung im deutschen Raum, Salzburg/Leipzig: Pustet.] Secondary Sources Alter, Stephen (1999), Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Daston, Lorraine and Catherine Park (2006), “Introduction: The Age of the New”, in L, Daston & C. Park (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. III: Early Modern Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marchand, Suzanne (2003), “Priests among the Pygmies: Wilhelm Schmidt and the Counter-Reformation in Austrian Ethnology”, in H. G. Penny & M. Bunzl (eds.), Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 283–316. McNeely, Ian (2020), “The Last Project of the Republic of Letters: Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Global Linguistics”, Journal of Modern History 92: 241–273. Majeed, Javed (2018), Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, London: Routledge. Messling, Markus (2016), Gebeugter Geist – Rassismus und Erkenntnis in der modernen europäischen Philologie, Göttingen: Wallstein. Shapin, Steven (1996), The Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Solleveld, Floris (2016), “How to make a Revolution. Revolutionary Rhetoric in the Humanities around 1800”, History of Humanities 1.2: 277–301. Solleveld, Floris (2019), “Language, People, and Maps: The Ethnolinguistics of George Grierson and Franz Boas” [review essay], History of Humanities 4.2: 461-471. Solleveld, Floris (2020), “Lepsius as a Linguist: Fieldwork, Philology, Phonetics, and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis'”, Language & History 63.3. Solleveld, Floris (2020), “Expanding the Comparative View: Humboldt’s Über die Kawi-Sprache and its Language Materials”, Historiographia Linguistica 47.1: 52–82. Solleveld, Floris (2020), “Afterlives of the Republic of Letters. Learned journals and scholarly community in the early 19th century”, Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5.1: 82-116. Solleveld, Floris (2020), “Klaproth, Balbi, and the Language Atlas”, in E. Aussant & J.-M. Fortis (eds.), History of Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS XIV), Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 81–99. Solleveld, Floris (2020), “Language Gathering and Philological Expertise: Sigismund Koelle, Wilhelm Bleek, and the Languages of Africa”, in J. François (ed.), Les Linguistes allemands du XIXème siècle et leurs Interlocuteurs étrangers, Paris: Éditions de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, pp. 169–200. Transcript by Luca Dinu JMc 00:18 Hi. I’m James McElvenny, and you’re listening to the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences Podcast, online at hiphilangsci.net. As always, you can find links and references to all the literature we discuss up on the website. With the last episode, we more or less reached the end of our survey of the main currents in 19th-century disciplinary linguistics. In this episode, we’re joined by Floris Solleveld from the Catholic University of Leuven, who’s going to give us another perspective on that century by talking to us about his work. Up until now in this podcast series, we’ve been travelling to exotic locales to meet our experts in their natural habitats. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible to travel to Leuven for this episode. Instead, for this interview, we’re fallen back on the internet, or cyberspace, or the information superhighway, as it was known at the time. This is a late 20th-century computer networking technology which allowed instant audiovisual contact between people all over the world. While this sort of video telephony had long been a dream of 20th-century science fiction, it was only with the pandemic of 2020, two decades into the 21st century that people started to embrace this technology rather than just meeting in person. So Floris, what was the character of language scholarship in the humanities more generally in the 19th century? In this series, we have already talked a little bit about how 19th-century language scholars emphasized the novelty of what they were doing, that there were frequent proclamations of a revolution in the language sciences. You’ve examined this question yourself in quite a bit of detail. Do you think that there was a decisive break in the study of language and the human world in the 19th century, and could it be described as a scientific revolution? FS 02:15 Hi, James. Well, thanks for having me here. And well, yes, I mean the question to what extent you can speak of a scientific revolution in the humanities is a question that I have pondered on for some six years, and my general, unspectacular answer is: Kind of. A lot of things happened, a lot of things changed, around 1800. There is a lot of revolutionary rhetoric surrounding it, and whether you call it a scientific revolution depends on your theoretical perspective and on your personal preferences, but what happens in linguistics actually is quite drastic. What you really see is a sort of breaking of paper trails, which is a really good indication that something really drastic happens, if people stop using work from a previous period, stop quoting from it, and also stop using material from [without] quoting it. And that is actually what kind of happens in 19th-century linguistics. They’re really not much using 18th-century work anymore, and indeed there is a staple of revolutionary rhetoric surrounding it. Friedrich Schlegel is the outstanding example. The man is a serial proclaimer of revolutions. I mean, even as a student, he proclaims a revolution in the study of antiquity. Then he invents the Romantic movement, and then he proclaims an Oriental renaissance in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. And most of his proclamations actually get picked up, although not exactly in the way that he intended them. I mean, he is not the guy who founds modern classical philology. His Oriental renaissance actually turns out to become the basis of comparative linguistics rather than the basis of a spiritual rejuvenation of the West, but I mean, to get that instead is not a crass failure either. But then also, if you look at that in retrospect, which is what happens in the 19th century as the discipline develops, you see that people actually look back on it in those terms, but there is a bit of a grey area. For instance, the first guy to actually speak of a scientific revolution in the study of language is Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. And what does he cite as an example? He doesn’t cite Schlegel. He cites Adelung, Mithridates, which is the text that people now classically use to contrast the previous paradigm and new historical-comparative linguistics, but Adelung was still used as a source of data, so in that regard, Adelung is basically the only or one of the few and far that actually still are used as source of information. JMc 05:05 Do you think that even though there are all of these proclamations of revolutions and people are not citing their predecessors, do you think that that really represents a break in continuity between the way people were doing the study of language in the 19th century and their predecessors and also a break in the way that they thought about language, the sort of philosophy of language and the philosophy of science that lies behind the discipline of linguistics? FS 05:33 Yes, I do think so. I mean, and not just in having this sort of historical-comparative perspective, which of course is very preeminent in 19th-century linguistics, but also, for instance, in the realization that there are these different language families, each with their own character, or with the idea that you can actually analyze language structures in different ways, because these different language families really have different organizational principles. Or also what you see as a result of that is, for instance, the mapping of sound systems or the analysis of different ways of ordering particles. I mean, you actually already see Humboldt splitting up Polynesian languages morphologically in Über die Kawi-Sprache. You already see Richard Lepsius drawing up diagrams of sound systems in the presentation of his phonetic alphabet, and that is the sort of analysis of language which really doesn’t happen in the 18th century. So yes, I do think that there is this sort of drastic discontinuity, and you also see that the term “linguistics” actually comes up in this period. Actually, the fun thing again is that the first people to actually use the term “linguistics” are late 18th-century German compilers who very much work within an early modern compilatory style of working, so in that regard, okay, you know, you never really have a clean break, but then scientific revolutions aren’t like political revolutions where you storm the Bastille or you storm the Winter Palace and you chop off the king’s head and you say it’s a revolution and nobody doubts it. With scientific revolutions, you always have this sort of unclarity like, okay, what is the measure of a complete conceptual break? And this is one reason why there has been a lot of scepticism about the notion of scientific revolutions in the history of science, mainly. In the history of scholarship, the question has been addressed far less, and why some people want to get rid of the phrase. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park talked about getting rid of that “ringing three-word phrase.” Steven Shapin said that “There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.” And that sort of sums up the communis opinio among historians of science. So within the humanities, I think the history of linguistics stands out for this sort of really radical conceptual break and break in ways in which material is organized and knowledge is being produced. So for the humanities at large, my answer is more like kind of, maybe a qualified yes, but linguistics really is one of the strongest arguments in favour of that. JMc 08:23 Okay. So would you say that accompanying the scientific revolution in linguistics, that there was a fundamental change in the sociological constitution of the field, and in scholarship more generally, in the 19th century? So for the scholarly community up until the end of the 18th century, it’s usual to talk about the Republic of Letters. Do you think that this was superseded in the 19th century by clear-cut university-based disciplines, or do you think that there was continuity from this earlier idea of the Republic of Letters? FS 08:55 So the Republic of Letters is a container notion for the learned world, which perceives itself as an independent commonwealth, hence republic, res publica, of letters. And “letters” here is an early modern container term for learning at large; “letters” really means what it means in the name-shield of the Faculty of Letters. And three things actually hold that community together, which is (a) a correspondence network reinforced by learned journalism, (b) a symbolic economy, and (c) the sense of an academic community. Now, these things, these three aspects, they actually persist. We still perceive ourselves as part of an imagined community. We still correspond with each other. We still trade in information and prestige, and we don’t get rich, generally. So to that extent, that sort of infrastructure persists. Now, still, the notion of Republic of Letters pretty much fades out from use in the early 19th century. I’ve traced that, and it is pretty much a sad story of how the term goes out of use. Some people try to reinvent it — doesn’t work. And there are very clear explanations for that. First of all, the notion of “republic” is appropriated by the French Revolution, gets different connotations. The notion of “letters” changes, or “literature” becomes a term for literature as an art form instead for learning at large. We still speak of the literature, you know, in our field, and that is sort of a remnant of that early modern use. And also, people now address their peers, or they address the nation, if they address a wider public, and they don’t address the learned community in that sense anymore. So it didn’t make that much sense for 19th-century scholars anymore to appeal to the Republic of Letters, and it did make, for instance, for late 17th-century Huguenot journalists who reinvented the notion, it did make sense for the parti philosophique, who appropriated (or rather, violently took over) the Republic of Letters in the mid-18th-century. It did make sense also for German academics who were trying to position themselves in the 18th century. But then this model of an amateur community being superseded by professionalism, that story has to be seriously qualified, because scholarship already is concentrated at universities in the German lands in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. And that is actually what gives the German-speaking countries an edge in the 19th century, because then it turns out that universities are a much more effective model for concentrating learning than they seem to be in the late early modern period, whereas what you see happening in the French- and English-speaking world is that this concentration of scholarship at universities goes a lot slower. It’s actually only in the second half of the 19th century, and especially after 1870, that this model really becomes so predominant that amateur or independent scholarship becomes the great exception. 1870, of course, in France, it means the end of the Second Empire because they lose the Franco-Prussian War, and then they reshape it into the Second Republic. In Britain, 1870 is not such a big break, but you see from the 1860s onward that there is a huge wave of new university foundations, so-called red brick universities, and that really leads to a change in the academic landscape. There had been new university foundations before, King’s College, London University College, Durham University, but those were more like additions to the Oxbridge duopoly and the Scottish big four or big five. And now what happens with red brick universities is, you really see an intensification of academic research. If you look at the number of university staff and students from 1700 to 1850, it’s pretty constant. There are some serious interruptions when the Jesuit Order is banished or when the French Revolution closes all the universities or when half the German universities die in the period between 1795 and 1818, but on the whole, it’s pretty constant. From the second half of the 19th century onward, it expands exponentially. So yes, the notion of Republic of Letters goes out of use in the early 19th century, but no, it’s not as if there is this clean break from an amateur learned community to institutional professional scholarship within well-delineated disciplines. But I do want to add a footnote to that, because Ian McNeely recently wrote an article about Humboldt’s Über die Kawi-Sprache as the last project of the Republic of Letters. JMc 13:43 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. FS 13:44 Because he says that Humboldt then pieced his information together from all kind of previous language gathering exercises like Adelung, like Hervás y Panduro, like the British colonial administrators in Southeast Asia, particularly Marsden, who then fed all that information into Humboldt’s coffers and then Humboldt, as a retired statesman and independent scholar, writes this big compendium which really still radiates the ghost of this imagined learned community. Now, that is not untrue, but again, this is McNeely’s schematism that he thinks of the Republic of Letters as a sort of reified scholarly community rather than as a notion that you use strategically to present your own situation. And if you look at how the languages of the world are mapped throughout the long nineteenth century, then quite a lot of these people actually are not university-based scholars, so there is a process of institutionalization around historical-comparative linguistics. A small part of that is about linguistics proper and about Sanskrit, but a much larger part is about German studies, French studies, Slavonic studies a bit later, English studies, so Germanistik, Romanistik, which is then informed by Indo-European comparative linguistics. But if you look at people who mapped the languages of India, the languages of Australia, the languages of Oceania, or the languages of the Americas, those are to a large part colonial administrators, people coordinating missionary networks. And those people do not operate anymore within what they would describe as a Republic of Letters. George Grey in Cape Town and Auckland did not think of himself as a citizen of the Republic of Letters. George Grierson mapping the languages of India did not think of himself as a citizen of the Republic of Letters. Well, maybe Peter Stephen Du Ponceau in Philadelphia (who, after all, was born in the 18th century and who still basically thrives on this correspondence network), maybe he thought of himself as a citizen of the Republic of Letters. I don’t know, but… JMc 15:56 But how did they think of themselves, and how were they seen by the newly emerging caste of professional linguists in universities? Was their work received in the centre of disciplinary linguistics, you know, in Indo-European comparative linguistics? Did it feed into that, or were they doing just something separate that was still considered to be an amateur project? FS 16:18 Well, no, what you see is that they do take on board professional expertise. So George Grey, again, is the outstanding example, because what does he do when he becomes Governor of South Africa and sets forth his language-gathering project which he already had been doing in Adelaide and Auckland? He hires a German philologist with a PhD (actually the first guy to actually get his PhD on African languages) to organize his library and to put the stamp of scientific approval on what George Grey had been doing. JMc 16:51 And that was Wilhelm Bleek. FS 16:53 And you see… Yeah, Wilhelm Bleek, that was. JMc 16:54 Yeah. FS 16:55 You also see it with George Grierson, who writes this – or coordinates – The Linguistic Survey of India and who himself tries to avoid some sort of strong institutional foothold, although he has affiliations, so as to retain some sort of independence, but he hires an assistant, Sten Konow, who is university-based. He gets honorary doctorates, he goes to orientalist congresses, and several of these people mapping the languages of the world, they get the Prix Volney. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau wins the Prix Volney. Did Sigismund Koelle win the Prix Volney? No, he didn’t. Oh, yes, he did. So there is this sort of interaction between this broader ethnolinguistic project and the more narrow discipline formation within linguistics, and you also see that some tools, especially phonetic alphabets, get developed within this broader network rather than within this narrow academic sphere. And of course, I mean institutionally, Indo-European historical-comparative linguistics is predominant because they have institutional firepower. If you look at who holds the chairs in Germany (where indeed there are chairs in these fields much earlier onward), it’s largely Sanskritists and Germanists, and if you look at the number of people who are actually engaged in this mapping of the languages of the world, so the number of people involved in a secondary sense that they supply information for it runs in thousands, but the number of people who actually put together these collections and make comparative grammars and language atlases — that’s a dozen, two dozen. It’s really not such a big community. JMc 18:46 Okay. Was this community of language scholars, did they work largely in isolation from other fields that were developing at the time, or are there interactions between linguistics and other sciences such as, I don’t know, ethnography, psychology, history even? FS 19:02 Yeah. Well, one of the greatest interactions that you haven’t mentioned yet actually is with geography. One way of literally mapping the languages of the world is through language atlases, and the people who actually invent the language atlas are geographers. It’s Adriano Balbi working in Paris who also makes a Atlas ethnographique du monde (An ethnographic atlas of the world), which is actually an overview of the languages of the world, and it’s Julius Klaproth, who is a self-taught Sinologist, who then turns to studying the languages of Asia and who also is a geographer, literally a map maker. So the Bibliothèque Mazarine — or is it the Bibliothèque Nationale? Anyway, they have hundreds or even thousands of Julius Klaproth’s map designs. For Julius Klaproth, there really is this strong intersection between linguistics and geography, but indeed ethnology is the most direct sister of linguistics within this project of what I call the mapping of the world, because, indeed, language is one of the clearest denominators of ethnic boundaries on a non-political level. So everyone who studied languages in the 19th century was aware that, okay, you can also learn a language if you are not part of that people, but generally, a people and the language community are overlapping unities. Well, of course, this notion of “people” was involved with all kind of projections of their own, especially in German, Volk, but if you want to make distinctions between different peoples, so really if you want to know, okay, there are a lot of people in this region, in this continent, and we want to know what the main differences between them are and how we should relate to them, then language really is the most [common] denominator. What you also see is that, indeed — and this, of course, is one of the dark heritages of the 19th-century colonial project — is that that classification is then reinforced or formulated in terms of physical anthropology, in terms of theories of race. But then one of the remarkable things here is that, again, these people are aware that there are such things as miscegenation, both on a linguistic and on a racial level, and there also is actually far less consensus about racial classification than there is about linguistic classification. This is surprising, but people nowadays tend to talk about racial theory in the 19th century as if it is this one big dark thing, and it is pretty dark — I wouldn’t want to deny that — but it’s not one thing. There is actually like half a dozen conflicting racial theories, and they are aware that they are leaking on all sides, so there are theories that simply say, okay, we divide these people into different colours. Black, white, red, yellow, and maybe also brown. Or we divide them into different facial forms. Or we divide them into hair growth. That’s actually the most comical one, so that’s actually Ernst Haeckel who comes up with that who says like, okay, well, colour is an arbitrary standard because it actually changes depending on the climate. Well, physical proportions are a continuum, but actually the different hair types are discrete sets, so we divide people into people with sleek hair, and people with curly hair, and people with woolly hair. JMc 22:35 And I believe that’s the basis of the classification that Friedrich Müller… FS 22:38 Yes, so then you really have these wollhaarigen Sprachen, which really doesn’t pass the giggle test in some regards. JMc 22:46 I guess also, too, that by the end of the 19th century, people who were trying to come up with sort of rigorous scientific definitions for racial theory found that it didn’t stack up and abandoned it. FS 22:58 What you see indeed is that there is a growing awareness, at least within the scientific community, that these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary, but then still the practice continues. Physical anthropology continues indeed until after World War II. What you see is that racial theory, because it is “natural science” (quotation marks) actually has this sort of appeal as a sort of more rigid quantitative approach, and even after Franz Boas actually starts actively not just noticing that the categories leak, but gathering lots of anthropometric data with the express aim of showing that anthropometry is not the right way to quantify people, even after that it continues. I mean, another interesting example is Pater Wilhelm Schmidt, the guy who basically represents Catholic ethnolinguistics, who writes an atlas of the world’s languages, does the classification of Australian Aboriginal languages that still kind of holds, and reorganizes the collections of the Propaganda Fide into the Vatican Museum of, Missionary-Ethnological Museum. So he’s firmly convinced you should look at culture, not race, but he says you should do that because ethnology is a separate scientific discipline. But he also keeps treating racial theory as a fully bona fide scientific approach. So there is this very funny – or, funny, well, it depends on your sense of humour – there is this very paradoxical outcome that he actually writes a tract Rasse und Volk in the 1920s, and then after the Nazis take over, he reformulates it into a tract: Rasse und Volk. Ihre allgemeine Bedeutung, ihre Geltung im deutschen Raum. That’s “Race and People: Their General Meaning and Their Significance in the German Area.” This book gets banned by the Nazis because he says, yes, we have racial theories, but no, they are irrelevant for understanding what a people is and what a language is. So, I mean, Pater Wilhelm Schmidt is not my hero – let’s be clear about that – but he does show a parting of the ways in this program. JMc 25:17 Thanks very much, Floris, for hooking up with us by Zoom to talk about linguistic scholarship in the long nineteenth century. FS 25:24 Yeah. Thank you very much, James. I mean, this is really a wonderful contribution that you’re making to the linguistic community, keeping us together over a distance in these dark times and reminding us of the past, of course, as an imagined community we’re also imagining ourselves to be part of.