Structuralism

Jürgen Van de Walle, Dominique Willems & Klaas Willems
Table of contents

Given the wide range of meanings which the term ‘structuralism’ received in the course of the 20th century, a clear-cut definition of linguistic structuralism is problematical. Strictly speaking, it refers to a set of general principles shared by prominent European linguists of the inter-war period who were all deeply influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (Saussure 1995[1916], hereafter CLG). However, it is also customary to refer to American linguistics as practised from the 1930s through the 1950s as ‘structural’, although its theoretical and methodological principles were considerably different from ‘European structuralism’ and Saussure’s influence rather limited. Moreover, several European post-war schools and movements (cf. § 4) are generally seen as falling within the purview of ‘structuralism’ as well. Although they differed in various important methodological issues, they have in common that, contrary to American structuralism, they were all deeply influenced by the CLG (cf. § 3).

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