165 Broadway – A crucial node in American Structural Linguistics

Summary

During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) provided language teaching manuals and dictionaries for military and civilian use. From 1 July 1943 through 30 June 1945, this work was concentrated at an office which was located at 165 Broadway, New York City, and which was headed by a group of young, vigorous, and well trained linguists. The author provides a list of the personnel of this group and describes their activities and their relations with other developments in linguistics at that time and thereafter. Emphasis is placed on the crucial rôle of the ‘165 Broadway’ group in the application of structural linguistic analysis to the teaching of foreign languages in the United States in following decades.

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