The magic of a common language : Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy, and the Prague Linguistic Circle
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Bibliographic Information
The magic of a common language : Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy, and the Prague Linguistic Circle
（Current studies in linguistics series, 26）
MIT Press, c1995
- : [pbk.]
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Note
Bibliography: p. [301]-344
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
ISBN 9780262200967
Description
Driven by a desire to create a new basis for the study of language, a heterogeneous group of Czech, Russian, Ukrainian and German scholars who found themselves in Prague in the mid-1920s launched the profoundly influential Prague Linguistic Circle. This book examines the historical factors that produced the Circle, the basic tenets that it promulgated, and, the social and cultural environment in which the Circle flourished. The study can also be read as an interlocked series of intellectual biographies of the major figures who gave the Prague Circle its direction. The new linguistics, whose core was to be in phonology, emphasized synchronic analysis, anti-psychologism anticausalism, the investigation of language contact, and the understanding of language as a social institution. Significantly, the Circle's theories were strongly connected to, and reflected by, Prague's literary and artistic avant-garde. The book is based on extensive archival research in Czech, Russian, and German sources.
Jindrich Toman shows how characteristics of the spirit of the age, such as the ideal of collective activity, the idea of a synthesis of knowledge, and an emphasis on a socially defined commitment to scholarship, became embedded in the Prague Circle's programme. Roman Jakobson is the Circle's best-known member, and it was he who broadcast its activity to a wider world, but Toman also focuses on several of Jakobson's colleagues who deserve equal appreciation, in particular the Russian prince and phonologist N.S. Trubetzkoy and the Czech professor of English and academic reformer Vilem Mathesius.
Table of Contents
- Mathesius's problem
- the linguist is a futurist - Roman Jakobson's formative years
- "the other circumstances" - Moscow, St Petersburg and the revolution
- Vilem Mathesius - in search of a new linguistics
- intermezzo - Jakobson and Mathesius in the early 1920s
- a republic of scholars - elements of cross-cultural integration in interwar Prague
- the magic of a common language
- un'organizzazione combattiva
- the rhetoric of modernity - more on ideals of scholarship and ideals of society
- Russian images of the whole - Trubetzkoy, Sprachbund and Eurasia
- the linguist remains a futurist - Roman Jakobson and the Czech avant-garde.
- Volume
-
: [pbk.] ISBN 9780262514569
Description
Jindrich Toman is especially adept at showing how characteristics of the spirit of the age, such as the ideal of collective activity, the idea of a synthesis of knowledge, and an emphasis on a socially defined commitment to scholarship, became embedded in the Prague Circle's program.
Driven by a desire to create a new basis for the study of language, a heterogeneous group of Czech, Russian, Ukrainian, and German scholars who found themselves in Prague in the mid-1920s launched the profoundly influential Prague Linguistic Circle. This book examines the historical factors that produced the Circle, the basic tenets that it promulgated, and, most important, the social and cultural environment in which the Circle flourished. The study can also be read as an interlocked series of intellectual biographies of the major figures who gave the Prague Circle its direction. The new linguistics, whose core was to be in phonology, emphasized synchronic analysis, anti-psychologism, anticausalism, the investigation of language contact, and the understanding of language as a social institution. Significantly, the Circle's theories were strongly connected to and reflected by Prague's literary and artistic avant-garde. The book is based on extensive archival research in Czech, Russian, and German sources. Jindrich Toman is especially adept at showing how characteristics of the spirit of the age, such as the ideal of collective activity, the idea of a synthesis of knowledge, and an emphasis on a socially defined commitment to scholarship, became embedded in the Prague Circle's program. Roman Jakobson is the Circle's best-known member, and it was he who broadcast its activity to a wider world, but Toman also focuses on several of Jakobson's colleagues who deserve equal appreciation, in particular the Russian prince and phonologist N. S. Trubetzkoy and the Czech professor of English and academic reformer Vilem Mathesius. Current Studies in Linguistics No. 26
by "Nielsen BookData"