Cover not available
Article published In:
Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 34:2/3 (2007) ► pp.189–212

Shelf life and time horizons in the historiography of linguistics

 | Jesus College, Oxford
The aim of this paper is to outline an approach to linguistic historiography which is informed by 20th-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, but which is formulated in linguistic terms. The key concept is that of the ‘time horizons’ which delimit the context which is relevant to the interpretation of an event or text. The idea of the time horizon is here illustrated by the everyday notion of the shelf-life of consumable items. The main thrust of the argument is that the interpretation of historical events and texts necessarily involves not one but two cognitive contexts, that of the historical protagonist and that of the modern observer. The approach sets up a three-level contrast between chronography (getting the facts right), reconstruction (recounting the historical story), and interpretation (making sense of the past story in terms of present-day understandings).
Published online: 13 November 2007
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.34.2.02cra
References (97)
References
Adam, Barbara. 1990. Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Amsler, Mark. 1989. Etymology and Grammatical Discourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Augustine of Hippo. 1961. Confessions. Translated with an Introduction by R. S. Pine-Coffin. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 2006. “Contextualization in Translator- and Interpreter-Mediated Events”. Journal of Pragmatics 381.321–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bal, Mieke. 1985. Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative. Toronto: Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Andrew. 2003. “Interpreter of Myths: A profile of Roy Foster”. The Guardian, Saturday Review, 13 September 2003, p. 20.Google Scholar
Brown, Gillian & George Yule. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer. [An abridged English translation of Part 2, “Das Zeigfeld der Sprache und die Zeigwörter”, can be found in Jarvella & Klein. (1982: 9–30).]Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. 2004. What is Cultural History? Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter & R. Po-chia Hsia. 2007. Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burns, Cecil Delisle. 1933a. “The Sense of the Horizon”. Philosophy 311.301–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1933b. The Horizon of Experience: A study of the modern mind. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Butterfield, Herbert. 1965 [1931]. The Whig Interpretation of History. New York & London: W. W. Norton. [Original publication: London: G. Bell & Sons, 1931.]Google Scholar
Carston, Robyn. 1996. “Enrichment and Loosening: Complementary processes in deriving the proposition expressed?” UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 81.61–88. LondonGoogle Scholar
Clay, Edmund R. 1882. The Alternative: A study in psychology. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Coveney, Peter & Roger Highfield. 1990. The Arrow of Time: A voyage through science to solve time’s greatest mystery. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Cram, David. 2003. “De gustibus metahistoriographicis”. Später Mittag: Vermischte Anmerkungen zur Metahistoriographie: Festgabe für Peter Schmitter zum. 60 Geburtstag ed. by Klaus D. Dutz, 11–22. Münster: Nodus.Google Scholar
. 2005. “On Wild Etymology and Descriptive Profligacy: A contrastive case study”. A Companion in Linguistics: A Festschrift for Anders Ahlqvist on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday ed. by Bernadette Smelik et al., 219–230. Nijmegen: Stichting Uitgeverij de Keltische Draak.Google Scholar
Cram, David & Jaap Maat. 2001. George Dalgarno on Universal Language: An edition and translation of Ars Signorum (1661) together with an edition of his unpublished papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cruse, D. Allen. 1977. “The Pragmatics of Lexical Specificity”. Journal of Linguistics 131.153–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dainton, Barry. 2000. Stream of Consciousness: Unity and continuity in conscious experience. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Davies, Anna Morpurgo. 1983. “Mycenean and Greek Prepositions: o-pi, e-pi etc”. Res Mycenaeae: Akten des VII. Internationalen Mykenologischen Colloquiums in Nürnberg 1981 ed. by Alfred Heubeck & Günter Neumann, 287–310. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Dutz, Klaus. 1988. Theorie und Praxis: Formen und Aufgaben einer semiotischen Geschichtsschreibung. Münster: Nodus.Google Scholar
. 1990. “Methodologische Probleme in der Rekonstruktion sprachwissenschaftlichen Wissens: Geschichte und Geschichten”. Understanding the Historiography of Linguistics: Problems and projects ed. by Werner Hüllen, 49–60. Münster: Nodus.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 2003. Mouse or Rat? Translation as negotiation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.Google Scholar
Fischer, David Hackett. 1971. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a logic of historical thought. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Fraser, Julius T., ed. 1968. The Voices of Time: A cooperative survey of man’s views of time as expressed by the sciences and the humanities. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans Georg. 1989. Truth and Method. 2nd revised ed. translated by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall. London: Sheed & Ward.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. A Century of Philosophy: A conversation with Riccardo Dottori. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Gale, Richard Milton. 1968. The Language of Time. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. [Translation of Discours du récit (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972).]Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 2005. Context as Other Minds: The pragmatics of sociality cognition, and communication. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Green, Georgia M. 1989. Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000 [1 1991]. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and context. 2nd ed. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
Hartley, L[eslie] P[oles]. 1953. The Go-Between. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John MacQuarrie & Edward Robinson. London: SCM Press.Google Scholar
House, Juliane. 2006. “Text and Context in Translation”. Journal of Pragmatics 381.338–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hüllen, Werner. 2005. “On the Method of Linguistic Historiography”. Flores grammaticae: Essays in memory of Vivien Law ed. by Nicola McLelland & Andrew R. Linn, 9–19. Münster: Nodus.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1962. Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersdemester 1925. Herausgegeben von Walter Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
. 1977. Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester 1925. Transl. by John Scanlon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Yan. 2006. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Itkonen, Esa. 1991. Universal History of Linguistics. India, China, Arabia, Europe. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jarvella, Robert J. & Wolfgang Klein, eds. 1982. Speech, Place, and Action: Studies in deixis and related topics. Chichester & New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Jaszczolt, Katarzyna. 1996. “Reported Speech, Vehicles of Thought, and the Horizon”. Lingua e Stile 311.113–133.Google Scholar
. 2002. Semantics and Pragmatics: Meaning in language and discourse. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Kelly, Louis G. 1979. The True Interpreter: A history of translation theory and practice in the west. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kelly, Sean Dorrance. 2005. “Temporal Awareness”. Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind ed. by David W. Smith & Amie L. Thomasson, 221–234. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koerner, E. F. K[onrad]. 1989. Practising Linguistic Methodology: Selected essays. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Koerner, E. F. K. 2004. Essays in the History of Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. (2nd ed., 1970.)Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnston. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Susanne K. 1942. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laver, James. 1937. Taste and Fashion from the French Revolution until Today. London: Harrap.Google Scholar
. 1969. Modesty in Dress: An inquiry into the fundamentals of fashion. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Law, Vivien. 2002. The History of Linguistics in Europe From Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linn, Andrew. 2001. “Professor Storm’s Diary: Historical fact – historiographical fiction”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 111.193–219.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1982. “Deixis and Subjectivity: Loquor ergo sum?”. Jarvella & Klein, eds. 1982.101–124.Google Scholar
Mabbott, John D. 1951. “Our Direct Experience of Time”. Mind 601.153–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McTaggart, John McT. E. 1908. “The Unreality of Time”. Mind 171.456–473.Google Scholar
Mundle, Clement W. K. 1954. “How Specious is the ‘Specious Present’?”. Mind 631.26–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munday, Jeremy. 2001. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and applications. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Palm, Jonas. 1969. “Lag die Zukunft der Griechen hinter ihnen?”. Annales Academiæ Regiæ Scientiarum Upsaliensis 131.5–13.Google Scholar
Percival, W. Keith. 1976. “The Applicability of Kuhn’s Paradigms to the History of Linguistics”. Language 521.285–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peters, Misja S., M. van Gool & E. Messing. 1992. A Bibliography on Space, Deixis, and Related Topics. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Puech, Christian. 2000. “L’esprit de Saussure: Paris contre Genève. L’héritage saussurien”. Modèles linguistiques 201.79–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Saussurisme et structuralisme français dans le contexte européen”. The Cambridge Companion to Saussure ed. by Carol Sanders, 124–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Recanati, François. 2005. “Literalism and Contextiualism: Some varieties”. Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, meaning and truth ed. by Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter, 171–196. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Russell, Matheson. 2006. Husserl: A guide for the perplexed. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1983 [1916]. Course in General Linguistics. Translated and annotated by Roy Harris. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1834 [1813]. “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens”. Sämtliche Werke, vol. III, Abt. II, 207–245. Berlin: Reimer.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Philip. 1977. “Newsmen and their Time-Machine”. British Journal of Sociology 81.336–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1987. Putting ‘Reality’ Together: BBC News. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Peter. 1982. Untersuchungen zur Historiographie der Linguistik: Struktur, Methodik, theoretische Fundierung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
. 1986. “Fortschritt: Zu einer umstrittenen Interpretationskategorie in der Geschichtsschreibung der Linguistik und der Semiotik”. Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung der Semiotik: Fallstudien ed. by Klaus Dutz & Peter Schmitter, 39–73. Münster: MAKs Publikationen.Google Scholar
. 1994. “Narrativity as a Metahistorical Term: Some systematic and historical considerations”. Perspectives on English: Studies in honour of Professor Emma Vorlat ed. by Keith Carlon, Kristin Davidse & Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, 140–157. Leuven & Paris: Peeters.Google Scholar
. 2003. Historiographie und Narration: Metahistoriographische Aspekte der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung der Linguistik. Seoul: Sowadalmedia; Tübingen: Gunter Narr (in Kommission).Google Scholar
Schudson, Michael. 1986. “Deadlines, Datelines, and History”. Reading the News ed. by Robert K. Manoff & Michael Schudson, 79–108. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1969. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”. History and Theory 81.3–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1986. “Loose Talk”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 61.153–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995 [1 1986]. Relevance: Communication and cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stamenov, Maxim I. 2003. “Language and Self-Consciousness: Modes of self-presentation in language structure”. The Self in Neuroscience and Psychiatry ed. by Tilo Kircher & Anthony S. David, 76–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tanz, Christian. 1980. Studies in the Acquisition of Deictic Terms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 1995 [1 1989]. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James, ed. 1988. Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his critics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Michael. 1979. Rubbish Theory: The creation and destruction of value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ungerer, Friedrich & Hans-Jörg Schmid. 1996. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: History of translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
West, Michael. 1953. A General Service List of English Words, with Semantic Frequencies. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Whitrow, Gerald James. 1980 [1 1961]. The Natural History of Time. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
. 1989. Time in History: Views of time from prehistory to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2004. “Relevance and Lexical Pragmatics”. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 161.343–360. London.Google Scholar
Young, Michael. 1988. The Metronomic Society: Natural rhythms and human timetables. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Joseph, John E.
2020. The agency of habitus: Bourdieu and language at the conjunction of Marxism, phenomenology and structuralism. Language & Communication 71 ► pp. 108 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.