A forgotten social science? Creating a place for linguistics in the historical dialogue

✍ Scribed by Janet Martin-Nielsen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 136 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20493

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The post–World War II era was one of great triumph for American linguists—and yet linguistics is all but absent from the historical literature on postwar social science. This paper aims to illuminate this curious situation: to understand its provenance, evaluate its merits, and contextualize it broadly. I argue that the historiographic lacuna results from two factors: (1) the opt‐out of linguists from the wider American social science community, and (2) historical‐developmental and ‐orientational factors that stand linguistics apart from the social science mainstream. The resultant isolation of linguistics has led to a parallel isolation in the historical literature. Ultimately, this paper poses a pivotal and timely question: How is the postwar social science space construed within the existing historiographic framework, and how should it be construed in order to maximize understanding? I propose a rethink of the received historiography centered on intellectual transformations and cross‐disciplinary integration. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.