Historicism 2a351g

Historicism Shazia Khokhar 14 Eng-Linguistics-38

HISTORICISM  Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place .  History is a container.  Everything happens in history.  History is itself an aim, because phenomenon happen swithin the framework of history.

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 Historicism therefore tends to be hermeneutical, because it places great importance on cautious, rigorous and contextualized interpretation of information.  Historicism is relativistic because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations.

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 Otto Jespersen in 1922 held that the distinctive feature of the science of language is its historical character.  Herman Paul Stated :  “As soon as one goes beyond the mere statement of individual facts, as soon as one tried to grasp their interconnection ,to understand a phenomena, one enters upon the domain of history, albeit perhaps unconsciously”

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 Herman Paul was a leading figure in neogrammarian orthodoxy.      The Neogrammarians(also Young Grammarians) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century.   Neogrammarian contribution to linguistics:  The object of linguistic investigation is not the language system. Language is directly observable.  The chief goal of linguistic investigation is the description of the historical change of a language

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 While the Neogrammarian tradition has dominated the history of linguistics, there was another once influential orientation, a philosophical-psychological typological-evolutionary outlook on the nature and evolution of language, now largely forgotten.  In the nineteenth century, there was a clash between views of linguistics as a  “Naturwissenschaft” (physical science) and “Geisteswissenschaft” (humanities).  Leading linguists attempted to place linguistics in the natural (physical) sciences, denying any value for the more humanistic, “sentimental” intellectual orientations.

Criticism of Historicism Two Senses of the Term “History”  It is a tautology that everything (other than God) is history if “history” is used to mean the totality of all that has been and will be in time. But in that case the word would -confusingly - mean the same as “the universe,” and historic-ism would not comprise an interesting or informative theory about human experience and knowledge.

Criticism of Historicism  Dilthey said:  The historical world-view has broken the last chain not yet broken by philosophy and natural science. Everything is flowing, nothing remains. But where are the means to conquer the anarchy of opinions which threatens us?