
Contents
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13.1 Introduction: the creation of languages in linguistics 13.1 Introduction: the creation of languages in linguistics
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13.2 Aim and approach 13.2 Aim and approach
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13.2.1 “A language” as a bounded and fixed entity 13.2.1 “A language” as a bounded and fixed entity
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13.2.2 Discourse theory: the interactive making of knowledge 13.2.2 Discourse theory: the interactive making of knowledge
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13.2.3 Outline 13.2.3 Outline
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13.3 Language and Romanticism 13.3 Language and Romanticism
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13.3.1 The nation and the vernacular 13.3.1 The nation and the vernacular
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13.3.2 Herder’s Origin of Language 13.3.2 Herder’s Origin of Language
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13.4 A new type of origin 13.4 A new type of origin
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13.5 A nation possesses a language 13.5 A nation possesses a language
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13.6 Emerging emergentism 13.6 Emerging emergentism
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13.6.1 Johannes Schmidt’s stair model 13.6.1 Johannes Schmidt’s stair model
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13.6.2 The Neogrammarian Manifesto 13.6.2 The Neogrammarian Manifesto
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13.7 The clash of two routes 13.7 The clash of two routes
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13.8 Concluding thoughts 13.8 Concluding thoughts
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13 Methodological nationalism and (anti-)historicism in the history of linguistics: Linguistic essentialism
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Published:April 2024
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Abstract
This paper investigates two parallel, conflicting and yet interdependent, discursive traits on human language all through the nineteenth century and beyond. One – empirically grounded in the Comparative Method as a scientific tool – is the growing awareness of the historicity and the fluidity of language. At the same time, the discursive construction of bounded and homogeneous national languages was an essential ideological requirement for the political nation building process in Europe. We identify the seeds of both lines of thinking in the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder at the beginning of a long nineteenth century and we see both of them struggling in the sometimes idiosyncratic reasoning of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours at the end of it. The underlying methodological nationalism, we conclude, has prevailed in pre- and post-Saussurean linguistic theory and methodology up until today.
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