Lingua · The Early Romantic Theory of Language: Experimental linguistics around 1800

The Early Romantic Theory of Language: Experimental linguistics around 1800

In my project, I investigated different aspects of the theory of language developed by German early Romanticism between, roughly, 1795 and 1808. Due to its fragmentary status, this theory became never fully known to a broader public, although the early Romantics anticipated many concepts and ideas which became relevant only in the twentieth century. According to this theory, language not only structures our perceptions and emotions, but also constitutes our knowledge, comprising thus all parts of human existence – sciences, arts, society. Language has the capacity to create reality, not just to represent it. Consequently, the early Romantics considered the function of language with regard to such different matters such as truth, personality, political and social processes, education, poetry. Most important, the early Romantics theorized about and experimented with ambiguous, paradoxical, or even contradictory figures that classical logic were unable to deal with. Instead of a static, closed theory, they favored a highly exploratory and open thinking. Complementary, they were among the first who applied methods of historical-comparative grammar. They acknowledged the interdependence between a national identity and a national language and started to investigate the affinity of German with other Germanic languages and cultures (Danish, Old English, Celtic, Gothic, Icelandic etc.). In natural sciences, but also in some schools of thought in the humanities, the dominating communication model explains language as a mere exchange of information between a sender and a receiver. By reducing language to its logical functions, it is neglected or ignored that language gives us a primary access to the world. The early Romantic theory of language, instead, establishes a holistic view on language. This extended perspective can be applied on several problems that contemporary sciences are dealing with: e. g. intersubjectivity, identity, transformational grammar etc. The early Romantic theory of language offers a supplement or even an epistemological alternative to prevailing scientific models, which is the reason why these ideas should be recovered. The project pursued two objectives: 1) to give the first written account of this theory by describing its emergence, development, and main ideas, 2) to demonstrate the relevance of these ideas for contemporary philosophy and sciences.

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