James Underhill
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638420
- eISBN:
- 9780748671809
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638420.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with ...
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This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with research into linguistic relativism and the work of Whorf. But few scholars quote Humboldt's writings, and those who do, often prove only that they fail to perceive the great scope of his work and that they are incapable of seizing the essential principles of Humboldt's ethnolinguistic project. Hegel, Chomsky, Crystal and Habermas all try understand Humboldt through the prism of their own approach to language and ideas. The present work, tries to set the record straight, and to demonstrate why Humboldt's linguistic philosophy will take us much farther than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt's work lays down a challenge to philosophy, which has difficulty in taking into account language as it is created and maintained in the world. At the same time, it represents no less of a challenge to approaches to language which seek to step over individual writing and speech, and speak of ‘language’ in abstraction, or seek the deeper structures of cognition. Humboldt takes us back to the origin of language, speech. His concept of language is supra-subjective. Individuals become individuals through language, through conversation in linguistic communities. At the same time Humboldt takes us back to languages in all their diversity. Finding something universal in that diversity, and something essentially specific in each facet of the universal faculty of language is the twin force of Humboldt's vast synthesis of empirical findings.Less
This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with research into linguistic relativism and the work of Whorf. But few scholars quote Humboldt's writings, and those who do, often prove only that they fail to perceive the great scope of his work and that they are incapable of seizing the essential principles of Humboldt's ethnolinguistic project. Hegel, Chomsky, Crystal and Habermas all try understand Humboldt through the prism of their own approach to language and ideas. The present work, tries to set the record straight, and to demonstrate why Humboldt's linguistic philosophy will take us much farther than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt's work lays down a challenge to philosophy, which has difficulty in taking into account language as it is created and maintained in the world. At the same time, it represents no less of a challenge to approaches to language which seek to step over individual writing and speech, and speak of ‘language’ in abstraction, or seek the deeper structures of cognition. Humboldt takes us back to the origin of language, speech. His concept of language is supra-subjective. Individuals become individuals through language, through conversation in linguistic communities. At the same time Humboldt takes us back to languages in all their diversity. Finding something universal in that diversity, and something essentially specific in each facet of the universal faculty of language is the twin force of Humboldt's vast synthesis of empirical findings.
Anna Wierzbicka
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199321490
- eISBN:
- 9780199369263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.003.0017
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, English Language
This chapter examines cognitive and cultural approaches in linguistics, focusing on the work of British linguists Vivian Cook and James Underhill, and the Russian linguistics Jurij Apresjan and ...
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This chapter examines cognitive and cultural approaches in linguistics, focusing on the work of British linguists Vivian Cook and James Underhill, and the Russian linguistics Jurij Apresjan and Aleksey Shmelev. Cook discusses conceptual Anglocentrism in human sciences from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, and Underhill from the perspective of ethnolinguistics; and they both recognize NSM’s importance in the necessary battle against such Anglocentrism. Apresjan, the leader of the Moscow semantic schools, is regarded by many as the world’s foremost lexicographer. Shmelev represents the Moscow School of Cultural Semantics. Both Apresjan and Shmelev see the NSM work as closely related to their own, which focuses on the “naïve picture of the world” reflected in every natural language. As this chapter illustrates, their thinking is clearly convergent with that underlying Imprisoned in English.Less
This chapter examines cognitive and cultural approaches in linguistics, focusing on the work of British linguists Vivian Cook and James Underhill, and the Russian linguistics Jurij Apresjan and Aleksey Shmelev. Cook discusses conceptual Anglocentrism in human sciences from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, and Underhill from the perspective of ethnolinguistics; and they both recognize NSM’s importance in the necessary battle against such Anglocentrism. Apresjan, the leader of the Moscow semantic schools, is regarded by many as the world’s foremost lexicographer. Shmelev represents the Moscow School of Cultural Semantics. Both Apresjan and Shmelev see the NSM work as closely related to their own, which focuses on the “naïve picture of the world” reflected in every natural language. As this chapter illustrates, their thinking is clearly convergent with that underlying Imprisoned in English.
