Cover not available
Part of
History of Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, (ICHoLS 14), Paris, 28 August – 1 September
Edited by Émilie Aussant and Jean-Michel Fortis
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 127] 2020
► pp. 189–204

The history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) in the history of linguistics

ORCID logo | University of Nottingham
Fifty years after two of the first overviews of the history of language teaching (Titone 1968, Kelly 1969), this paper highlights the value of the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) to the history of linguistics, from three perspectives: (1) theoretical and descriptive insights; (2) insights into practice (e.g. changing conceptions and articulations of what it means to learn a language, reflecting changing language ideologies); and (3) making space in the history of linguistics for “history from below” – in particular as learning and teaching of languages, offered a space for females’ participation in and visibility in linguistic matters.
Keywords: HoLLT (History of Language Learning and Teaching), forms of address, German language history, historical pragmatics, grammars for non-native speakers, history of linguistics from below, women in the history of linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.HoLLT and new descriptive and theoretical insights in the history of linguistics
    • 2.1The case of word order in German
    • 2.2HoLLT and timelines for language change and language description: The case of forms of address in German
  • 3.Observing Changes in practice in HoLLT as evidence for changing language conceptualizations and ideologies
  • 4.History of linguistics ‘from below’, especially women in the history of linguistics
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.127.13mcl
References (67)
References
Aedler, Martin [anon.]. 1680. The Hig [sic] Dutch Minerva // a-la-mode// or // A Perfect Grammar […]. London: Printed for the author (Facsimile repr., Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Adelung, Johann Christoph. 1782. Umständliches Lehrgebäude der Deutschen Sprache, zur Erläuterung der Deutschen Sprachlehre für Schulen. Von Joh. Christoph Adelung. Leipzig: verlegts Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf.Google Scholar
Albertus, Laurentius (Ostrofrancus). 1573. Teutsch Grammatick oder Sprach-Kunst. Certissima ratio discendae, augendae, ornandae, propagandae, conservandaeque linguae Alemannorum sive Germanorum, Grammaticis Regulis et exemplis comprehensa & conscripta. Augsburg: Michaël Manger. (Repr. ed. by Carl Müller-Fraureuth, Strasbourg: Trübner, 1895).Google Scholar
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy, ed. 1994. La Grammaire des dames. [Special issue]. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 16(2). Accessible online: [URL].
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy & Helena Sanson, eds. 2020. Women in the History of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar
Bachmair, John James. 1751, 1752, 1771. A complete German Grammar […]. 1st ed. London: [n.p.], 1751; 2nd ed. London: for Andr. Linde, etc., 1752; 3rd ed. (“greatly altered and improved”) London: Printed for G. Keith, B. Law, E. and C. Dilly, and Robinson and Roberts, 1771. (The 1771 edition, cited here, is available through ECCO.)Google Scholar
Brebner, Mary. 1909 [1898]. The Method of Teaching Modern Languages in Germany […]. London: C.J. Clay and Sons.Google Scholar
Caravolas, Jean-Antoine. 1994. La didactique des langues. Précis d’histoire I. 1450–1700. Anthologie I. A L’ombre de Quintilien. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Caravolas, Jean. 2000. Histoire de la didactique des langues au siècle des Lumières: précis et anthologie thématique. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Chambaud, Lewis. 1750. A grammar of the French tongue. With a prefatory discourse, containing An essay on the Proper Method for Teaching and Learning that Language. London: printed for A. Millar, at Buchanan’s-Head over against Catharine-Street in the Strand. [Available online through ECCO].Google Scholar
. 1765. The art of speaking French: or the French language methodised for the use of the English. Dublin: Hulton Bradley. [revised edition of Chambaud 1750].Google Scholar
Chervel, André. 2009. “Pour une histoire comparée des disciplines du français langue étrangère et du français langue maternelle”. Le langage et l’homme 44.1: 85–98.Google Scholar
Clajus, Johannes. 1578. Grammatica Germanicae Linguae M. Iohannis Claij Hirtzenbergensis: Ex Bibliis Lutheri Germanicis et aliis eius libris collectis. Leipzig: Johannes Rhamba (Repr. with an introduction by Friedrich Weidling, Strasbourg: Trübner, 1894).Google Scholar
Cohen, Michèle. 2018. “‘Glittering gibberish’ or the ‘mere jabbering’ of a bonne: The problem of the ‘oral’ in the learning and teaching of French in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England”. History of Language Learning and Teaching. Vol. II. 19th-20th Century Europe ed. by Nicola Mclelland & Richard Smith, 1–20. London: Legenda.Google Scholar
Doff, Sabine. 2002. Englischlernen zwischen Tradition und Innovation : Fremdsprachenunterricht für Mädchen im 19. Jahrhundert. Munich: Langenscheidt-Longman.Google Scholar
Finotti, Irene & Nadia Minerva, eds. 2012. Voix féminines. Ève et les langues dans l’Europe moderne [Special issue]. Documents pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde 47–48. Online at [URL] .
Gilchrist, John. 1798. The Oriental Linguist: An Easy and Familiar Introduction to the Popular Language of Hindoostan […]. Calcutta: printed by Thomson, Ferris, and Greenway.Google Scholar
Glück, Helmut. 2002. Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Europa vom Mittelalter bis zur Barockzeit. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Mehrsprachigkeit in der frühen Neuzeit. Die Reichstädte Augsburg und Nürnberg vom 15. bis ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Gottsched, Johann Christoph. 1748. Grundlegung der deutschen Sprachkunst, Nach den Mustern der besten Schriftsteller des vorigen und jetzigen Jahrhunderts abgefasst von Johann Christoph Gottscheden. Leipzig: Verlegts Bernh. Christoph Breitkopf.Google Scholar
Howatt, Anthony P. R., with Henry G. Widdowson. 2004. A History of English Language Teaching (Second Edition). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Hüllen, Werner. 2005. Kleine Geschichte des Fremdsprachenlernerns. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.Google Scholar
Husbands, Christopher. 2001. “Who was Elizabeth P. Weir?: Gender Visibility and Female Invisibility in the World of Lexicography”. The Linguist 40.2: 48–51.Google Scholar
Jacotot, Joseph. 1824. Enseignement universel: langue étrangère. Louvain: H. de Pauw.Google Scholar
Kelly, Louis (1969). Twenty-five Centuries of Language Teaching. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Klippel, Friederike. 2018. “Comparing Cultural Content in English-Language Textbooks for Germans in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”. History of Language Learning and Teaching. Vol. III. Across Cultures ed. by Nicola McLelland & Richard Smith, 1–21. Legenda: Oxford.Google Scholar
Klöter, Henning. 2010. The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Law, Vivien. 2003. The History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina. (1994). “Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts”. Language in Society 23.2: 63–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loonen, Petrus Leonardus Maria 1991. For to learne to buye and sell: learning English in the Low Dutch area between 1500 and 1800: a critical survey. Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press.Google Scholar
Ludwig, Christian. 1716. Teutsch-Englisches Lexicon […]. Leipzig: Bey Thomas Fritschen.Google Scholar
McLelland, Nicola. 2011. J.G. Schottelius’s Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubtsprache (1663) and its place in early modern European vernacular language study. Oxford: Blackwell (Publications of the Philological Society).Google Scholar
2012. “Walter Rippmann and Otto Siepmann as Reform Movement Textbook Authors: A Contribution to the History of Teaching and Learning German in the United Kingdom”. Language & History 55:125–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. German Through English Eyes. A History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain, 1500–2000. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: A History of Language Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018a. “Deutsch als Fremdsprache und die deutsch-englische Lexikographie bis 1900”. Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft um 2020. Vol. 2: Lexik: Theorie und Empirie ed. by Stefan Engelberg, Heidrun Kämper & Petra Storjohann, 295–320. Institut Deutsche Sprache: Mannheim.Google Scholar
. 2018b. “Mining Foreign Language Teaching Manuals for the History of Pragmatics”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 19.1: 28–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “ ‘That subtle influence for which women are best suited’: Women and German Language Studies, 1700–1920”. Women in the history of Linguistics ed. Wendy Ayres-Bennett & Helena Sanson. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
McLelland, Nicola & Richard Smith, eds. (2014). Building the History of Modern Language Learning. Special issue of Language & History, 57.1, with an introduction by the editors.Google Scholar
, eds. (2018). The History of Language Learning and Teaching. I. 16th-18th Century Europe. II. 19th-20th Century Europe. III. Across Cultures. Oxford: Legenda.Google Scholar
Meidinger, Johann Valentin. 1783. Praktische Französische Grammatik. Frankfurt: n.p. (1799 ed. online at [URL] ).
Milroy, James, & Lesley Milroy. 1985. Authority in Language. Investigating Language Standardisation and Prescription. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Missionary Linguistics World-wide: Theory, Practice and Politics. 2015. Special issue, Historiographia Linguistica 42.2–3.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Charlotte. 2008. “Women students at UCL in the early 1880s”. Online at [URL].
Miyajima Daihachi. 1942. Eikisya Kanwa [詠帰舎閑話 Essays in the Eikisya] Tyūgoku Bungaku [中国文学 Chinese Literature] 83. Tokyo: Kyūko Syoin [汲古書院].Google Scholar
Offelen, Heinrich. 1687. A double grammar for Germans to learn English, and for English-men to learn the German-tongue […]. London: Old Spring Garden by Charing Cross.Google Scholar
Ölinger, Albertus. 1573. Underricht der HochTeutschen Spraach […].. Strasbourg: Nicolaus Vuyriot (Repr. of 1574 edition, Hildesheim: Olms, 1975).Google Scholar
Polenz, Peter von. 1999. Deutsche Sprachgeschichte vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Vol. III. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pytlowany, Anna. 2018. Ketelaar rediscovered. The first Dutch grammar of Persian and Hindustani (1698). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam.]Google Scholar
Sanson, Helena. 2014. “Simplicité, clarté et précision: grammars of Italian ‘pour les dames’ and other learners in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France”. Modern Language Review 109: 593–616. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schottelius, Justus Georg. 1663. Ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen Haubtsprache. Braunschweig: Zilliger (Repr. ed. by Wolfgang Hecht, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1967).Google Scholar
Smith, Richard. 2016. Building “Applied Linguistic Historiography”: Rationale, scope and methods. Applied Linguistics 37.1: 71–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Richard, and Nicola McLelland. 2018. “Histories of language learning and teaching in Europe”, Special issue of The Language Learning Journal, 46.Google Scholar
Steadman-Jones, Richard. 2007. Colonialism and Grammatical Representation: John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the ‘Hindustani’ Language in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stein, Gabriele. 1985. “Englisch-German/German-English Lexicography: Its early beginnings”. Lexicographica. International Annual for Lexicography / Revue Internationale de Lexicographie / Internationales Jahrbuch für Lexikographie 1: 134–164.Google Scholar
Stieler, Kaspar. 1691. Der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum und Fortwachs […]. Nuremberg: Johann Hoffmann (Repr. mit einem Nachwort von Stefan Sonderegger, Munich: Kösel, 1968).Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas, & Ingo Warnke. 2015. “From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics.” In Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics ed. by Klaus Zimmermann and Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein, 3–26. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Suso López, Javier. 2003. “Télémaque au coeur de la « méthode » Jacotot”. Documents pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde 30: 1–11.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward P. 1966. “History from Below”. Times Literary Supplement. 65: 275–80.Google Scholar
Titone, Renzo. 1968. Teaching Foreign languages. An Historical Sketch. Washington D. C: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Alexander. 2013. “Karl Heinrich Schaible (1824–1899). Eine Fallstudie zur Germanistik und der deutschen Kolonie in London”. Euphorion 107: 229–58.Google Scholar
Weir, Elizabeth. 1888. Heath’s new German Dictionary: in two Parts, German-English–English-German. Boston: Heath. Online at [URL]
Wendeborn, Gebhardt Friedrich August. 1774. The Elements of German Grammar. London: C. Heydinger.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Garon. 2013. Language Teaching Through the Ages. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, Tiezheng. 2018. “Chinese Language Educators in Meiji-Era Japan: Miyajima Daihachi and Zhang Tingyan”. History of Language Learning and Teaching. Vol. III. Across Cultures ed. by Nicola McLelland & Richard Smith, 176–193. Legenda: Oxford.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Klaus & Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein (eds.). 2015. Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar