From Whitney to Chomsky : Essays in the history of American linguistics.
Title:
From Whitney to Chomsky : Essays in the history of American linguistics.
Author:
Joseph, John E.
ISBN:
9789027275370
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (242 pages)
Series:
Studies in the History of the Language Sciences ; v.103
Studies in the History of the Language Sciences
Contents:
FROM WHITNEY TO CHOMSKY: ESSAYS IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- CHAPTER 1. THE MULTIPLE AMBIGUITIES OF AMERICAN LINGUISTIC IDENTITY -- The origins of American linguistic identity -- Linguistic thought in the 'Age of Discovery': Nebrija -- Linguistic thought in the Romantic Age: Humboldt -- American linguistic identity -- Politics, language and myth -- The identity of American linguistics -- CHAPTER 2. THE AMERICAN WHITNEY' AND HIS EUROPEAN HERITAGES AND LEGACIES -- Whitney's and Max Müller's lectures -- Whitney's Life and Growth of Language -- Saussure's encounter with Whitney -- Saussurepro and contra Whitney -- APPENDIX -- TRANSLATION -- CHAPTER 3. 20TH-CENTURY LINGUISTICS IN AMERICA AND EUROPE -- 'Progress' and 'science' in linguistics -- Linguistic 'mainstreams' -- Language theory before World War I -- Saussure and the CLG -- The emergence of structuralist schools -- Development in historical linguistics -- Post-World War II 'algebraic' structuralism -- Transformational-generative grammar, including generative phonology -- Sociolinguistics -- Universal-typological linguistics -- Discourse analysis -- Conclusion -- CHAPTER 4. THE SOURCES OF THE 'SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS' -- Sapir and Humboldt -- 'Metaphysical garbage' and 'magic key' -- The metaphysical garbage line from Ogden & Richards to Sapir -- From Sapir to Whorf -- Whorf, Korzybski and Ogden -- Other influences on Whorf -- Conclusion -- CHAPTER 5. THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SOCIOLINGUISTICS -- The term 'sociotinguistics' and its pedigree -- Furfey's education and career up to WWII -- The sociology of language before WWII -- Furfey's sociology of language course and related articles -- Furfey on Bloomfield -- Putnam and O'Hern and those they cite.
Writing Putnam and O'Hern out of the history of sociolinguistics -- APPENDIX -- CHAPTER 6. BLOOMFIELD'S AND CHOMSKY'S READINGS OF THE COURS DE LINGUISTIQUE GÉNÉRALE -- Misreading and ideology -- Bloomfield and Saussure -- Bloomfield (1923): Self-defence -- Bloomfield (1926) and (1927): Saussure the behaviourist -- Chomsky and Saussure -- Chomsky (1963) the Saussurean -- Chomsky (1962-64): Reaching further back -- Chomsky (1965-79) the Anti-saussurean -- Chomsky (1986) and after: the Neo-Saussurean? -- Conclusion -- CHAPTER 7. HOW STRUCTURALIST WAS 'AMERICAN STRUCTURALISM'? -- Euro-American linguistic relations in the 1930s and '40s -- What was structuralism taken to mean in the 1940s? -- Chomsky's transformation of structuralism -- Re-identifying American structuralism and ending the Cold War -- CHAPTER 8. HOW BEHAVIOURIST WAS VERBAL BEHAVIOR? -- Studying the activity rather than its traces -- Skinner's categories -- Chomsky's review -- Who won? -- The black scorpion -- CHAPTER 9. THE POPULAR (MIS)INTERPRETATIONS OF WHORF AND CHOMSKY: WHAT THEY HAD IN COMMON, AND WHY THEY HAD TO HAPPEN -- On becoming famous for what one did not mean -- The 20th-century discourse on propaganda -- Great War propaganda anxiety and language theory -- Radio waves and the subconscious -- Sex, popular culture and Margaret Mead -- The (mis)readings of Whorf and Chomsky -- REFERENCES -- INDEX.
Abstract:
What is 'American' about American linguistics? Is Jakobson, who spent half his life in America, part of it? What became of Whitney's genuinely American conception of language as a democracy? And how did developments in 20th-century American linguistics relate to broader cultural trends?This book brings together 15 years of research by John E. Joseph, including his discovery of the meeting between Whitney and Saussure, his ground-breaking work on the origins of the 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis' and of American sociolinguistics, and his seminal examination of Bloomfield and Chomsky as readers of Saussure.Among the original findings and arguments contained herein: why 'American structuralism' does not end with Chomsky, but begins with him; how Bloomfield managed to read Saussure as a behaviourist avant la lettre; why in the long run Skinner has emerged victorious over Chomsky; how Whorf was directly influenced by the mystical writings of Madame Blavatsky; how the Whitney-Max Müller debates in the 19th century connect to the intellectual disparity between Chomsky's linguistic and political writings.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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