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Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 22:3 (1995) ► pp.311–334

The 1930s – at the birth of a Pragmatic Conception of Language

| University of Nottingham

The 1930s were a time of immense cultural and scientific activity. It is well known that this was the time when structuralism made its appearance on the linguistic scene. It is generally less well known that this was also a time when a great number of books and articles dealing with ‘pragmatic’ issues appeared in linguistics and its adjacent disciplines. This article describes the birth of a ‘pragmatic Weltanschauung’ through the analysis of a selection of texts. It leaves open the question as to why the pragmatic insights made in the 1930s were forgotten when ‘pragmatics’ became a branch of linguistics in the 1970s.

Published online: 1 January 1995
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.22.3.03ner
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