School
Prague linguistic circle
Overview
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and a theory of the standard language and of language cultivation from 1928 to 1939. The linguistic circle was founded in the Café Derby in Prague, which is also where meetings took place during its first years.
The Prague School has had a significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics. After the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, the circle was disbanded in 1952, but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school or English Firthian – later Hallidean – linguistics). The American scholar Dell Hymes cites his 1962 paper "The Ethnography of Speaking" as the formal introduction of Prague functionalism to American linguistic anthropology. The Prague structuralists also had a significant influence on structuralist film theory, especially through the introduction of the ostensive sign.
Today the Prague linguistic circle is a scholarly society which aims to contribute to the knowledge of language and related sign systems according to functionally structural principles. To this end, it organizes regular meetings with lectures and debates, publishes professional publications, and organizes international meetings.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Under the old _régime_ it was unquestionably a most serious problem to give the children a full and free use of language. The reason was obvious. The natural motive for language was seldom offered. In the pedagogical text-books language is defined as the medium of expressing thought. It becomes that, more or less, to adults with trained minds, but it hardly needs to be said that language is primarily a social thing…
John Dewey, The School and Society Being three lectures
States what Prague linguistic circle is.
These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Prague linguistic circle is.
This is a truly marvellous work. It has been done during the present generation, and Webster's Dictionary defines it as a polyglot jargon used for inter-communication by Jews from different nations.
Mahatma Gandhi, Third class in Indian railways
Close in meaning to Prague linguistic circle; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Prague linguistic circle
Related ideas
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Postcolonialism
- Louis Hjelmslev
- Noam Chomsky
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Prague
- Roman Jakobson
- Semiotics
- Nikolai Trubetzkoy
- Literary criticism
- Émile Benveniste
- George Steiner
- Czechs
- Ostensive definition
- Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School
- John Rupert Firth
Place in the tradition
Part of Structuralism.