Prague linguistic circle
Encyclopedia
The Prague school or the Prague linguistic circle was an influential group of literary critics and linguist
s in Prague
. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis
during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics
and semiotics
. After World War II
, the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school
or English Firthian — later Hallidean
— linguistics). American scholar Dell Hymes
cites his 1962 paper, "The Ethnography of Speaking," as the formal introduction of Prague functionalism to American linguistic anthropology (see Hymes, "Prague Functionalism," American Anthropologist, 84, 2, p. 398).
The Prague linguistic circle included Russian émigrés such as Roman Jakobson
, Nikolai Trubetzkoy
, and Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars René Wellek
and Jan Mukařovský
. The instigator of the circle and its first president was the eminent Czech
linguist Vilém Mathesius
(President of PLC until his death in 1945).
The group's work before World War II was published in the Travaux Linguistiques and its theses outlined in a collective contribution to the World's Congress of Slavists. The Travaux were briefly resurrected in the 1960s with a special issue on the concept of center and periphery
and are now being published again by John Benjamins
. The group's Czech work is published in Slovo a slovesnost. English translations of the Circle's seminal works were published by the Czech linguist Josef Vachek in several collections.
Contributors:
Influences:
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
s in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis
Semiotic literary criticism
Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics...
during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school
The Copenhagen school (Linguistics)
The Copenhagen School, officially the "Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen ", was a group of scholars dedicated to the study of structural linguistics founded by Louis Hjelmslev and Viggo Brøndal...
or English Firthian — later Hallidean
Michael Halliday
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar .-Biography:Halliday was born and raised in England...
— linguistics). American scholar Dell Hymes
Dell Hymes
Dell Hathaway Hymes was a sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist whose work dealt primarily with languages of the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology" instead of "anthropological linguistics"...
cites his 1962 paper, "The Ethnography of Speaking," as the formal introduction of Prague functionalism to American linguistic anthropology (see Hymes, "Prague Functionalism," American Anthropologist, 84, 2, p. 398).
The Prague linguistic circle included Russian émigrés such as Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
, Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morphophonology...
, and Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars René Wellek
René Wellek
René Wellek was a Czech-American comparative literary critic. Like Erich Auerbach, Wellek was an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition and was known as a vastly erudite and "fair-minded critic of critics."René Wellek was born and raised in Vienna, speaking Czech and German...
and Jan Mukařovský
Jan Mukarovský
Jan Mukařovský was a Czech literary and aesthetic theorist.He was professor at the Charles University of Prague. He is well known for his association with early structuralism as well as with the Prague Linguistic Circle, and for his development of the ideas of Russian formalism...
. The instigator of the circle and its first president was the eminent Czech
Czech people
Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...
linguist Vilém Mathesius
Vilém Mathesius
Vilém Mathesius was a Czech linguist and literary historian, a scholar of English and Czech literature. His cousin was Bohumil Mathesius....
(President of PLC until his death in 1945).
The group's work before World War II was published in the Travaux Linguistiques and its theses outlined in a collective contribution to the World's Congress of Slavists. The Travaux were briefly resurrected in the 1960s with a special issue on the concept of center and periphery
Postcolonialism
Post-colonialism is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism...
and are now being published again by John Benjamins
John Benjamins
John Benjamins Publishing Company is an independent academic publisher in social sciences and humanities with its head office in Amsterdam. Its North American office is in Philadelphia, United StatesIt is especially noted for its publications in linguistics...
. The group's Czech work is published in Slovo a slovesnost. English translations of the Circle's seminal works were published by the Czech linguist Josef Vachek in several collections.
Members
- Petr Bogatyrev
- František Čermák (cs)
- Miroslav Červenka (cs)
- Bohuslav Havránek (cs)
- Tomáš Hoskovec (cs)
- Josef Hrabák (cs)
- Roman JakobsonRoman JakobsonRoman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
- Sergej Karcevskij, exactlier Sergej Josifovič Karcevskij (cs)
- Oldřich Leška (cs)
- Alena Macurová (cs)
- Vilém MathesiusVilém MathesiusVilém Mathesius was a Czech linguist and literary historian, a scholar of English and Czech literature. His cousin was Bohumil Mathesius....
- Jan MukařovskýJan MukarovskýJan Mukařovský was a Czech literary and aesthetic theorist.He was professor at the Charles University of Prague. He is well known for his association with early structuralism as well as with the Prague Linguistic Circle, and for his development of the ideas of Russian formalism...
- Karel Oliva (cs)
- Vladimír Skalička (cs)
- Bohumil Trnka (cs)
- Pavel Trost (cs)
- Nikolai TrubetzkoyNikolai TrubetzkoyPrince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morphophonology...
- Josef Vachek (cs)
- Jiři Veltřusky
- Miloš Weingart (1980-1939)
- René WellekRené WellekRené Wellek was a Czech-American comparative literary critic. Like Erich Auerbach, Wellek was an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition and was known as a vastly erudite and "fair-minded critic of critics."René Wellek was born and raised in Vienna, speaking Czech and German...
Contributors:
- Aleksandar Belić, Serbian linguist
- Émile BenvenisteÉmile BenvenisteÉmile Benveniste was a French Jewish structural linguist, semiotician, an apprentice of Antoine Meilletand his successor, who, in his later years, became enlightened by the structural view of language through the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, although he was unwilling to grasp it at first, being...
- Karl Bühler
- Albert Willem de Groot
- Daniel JonesDaniel Jones (phonetician)Daniel Jones was a London-born British phonetician. A pupil of Paul Passy, professor of phonetics at the École des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne , Daniel Jones is considered by many to be the greatest phonetician of the early 20th century...
- André MartinetAndré MartinetAndré Martinet was a French linguist, influential by his work on structural linguistics....
- Lucien TesnièreLucien TesnièreLucien Tesnière was one of the most prominent and influential French linguists.Tesnière was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on May 13, 1893...
Influences:
- Joseph GreenbergJoseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
- Jiří LevýJirí LevýJiří Levý was a Czech literary theoretician, literary historian and translation theoretician.-Early life and career:Jiří Levý was born on 8 August 1926 in Košice , and died on 17 January 1967 in Brno ....
- Dell HymesDell HymesDell Hathaway Hymes was a sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist whose work dealt primarily with languages of the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology" instead of "anthropological linguistics"...
- Alf SommerfeltAlf SommerfeltAlf Sommerfelt , was a Norwegian linguist and the first professor of linguistics in Norway, working at the University of Oslo from 1931 to 1962.-Linguistics work:...
- Jože ToporišičJože ToporišicJože Toporišič is a Slovene linguist.Toporišič was born in a small village near Brežice in Slovenia, in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes...
- Michael HallidayMichael HallidayMichael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar .-Biography:Halliday was born and raised in England...
- Viktor ShklovskyViktor ShklovskyViktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet critic, writer, and pamphleteer.-Life:...
- Michael SilversteinMichael SilversteinMichael Silverstein is a professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He is a theoretician of semiotics and linguistic anthropology. Over the course of his career he has drawn together research on linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language ideology,...
- Jan FirbasJan FirbasJan Firbas , was a Czech linguist and a prominent proponent of the Prague School of linguistics. Born in Brno, in the Czech Republic, he studied English and Linguistics at local Masaryk University. After obtaining his PhD, he would stay at Masaryk as a member of the Department of English and...
- Lubomir DolezelLubomir DolezelLubomír Doležel is a Czech literary theorist and one of the founders of the so-called fictional worlds theory.- Life, Work, and Academic Career :...
- Austin WarrenAustin WarrenAustin Warren was an American literary critic, author, and professor of English.-Childhood and Education:...
- Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay
- Louis HjelmslevLouis HjelmslevLouis Hjelmslev was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family , Hjelmslev studied comparative linguistics in Copenhagen, Prague and Paris...
- Jaroslav VacekJaroslav VacekJaroslav Vacek is director of the Institute of South and Central Asia and former dean of the Philosophical Faculty at the Charles University in Prague, where he founded the teaching and research of Mongolian as a new subject. He is a member of the Czech Oriental Society, the Prague Linguistic...
- Jaroslav PeregrinJaroslav PeregrinJaroslav Peregrin is a professor of logic at Charles University in Prague and also a faculty member at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He has published almost a hundred books and articles in several languages...
- Tartu-Moscow Semiotic SchoolTartu-Moscow Semiotic SchoolTartu-Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed since 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander Piatigorsky, Isaak...
External links
- The Prague Linguistic Circle homepage (includes a list of publications about the Circle)