>
> (i) I would very strongly recommend that the academic remit of the
> Society should be designated by the simple term history of linguistics,
> rather than history of linguistic ideas, on the grounds that linguistics
> is the unmarked label currently in use for the study of all aspects of
> language.
>
> This issue has a history. The criterion for selecting the wording history
> of linguistic ideas in the first place (both for the Henry Sweet Society
> and for the International Conferences) was so that the scope of our
> activities should be inclusive of people working on the history of ideas
> relating to language in departments other than Linguistics departments
> (e.g. English, Psychology, History, etc). However, there were other
> voices (mine included) who argued at the time that this manner of
> promoting inclusivity was not a good idea. If linguistics is indeed an
> established unmarked term for an area of study, and you deliberately and
> ostentatiously select a marked term other than this, then any speaker of
> the language (barring autism) will derive the conversational implicature
> the remit of the Society is not 'linguistics proper' but the
> interdisciplinary areas surrounding it. The purportedly 'inclusive'
> naming strategy has, in my view, alienated many doctoral students in
> linguistics who might otherwise have undertaken historical research on
> the subject.
>
As David says, this has a history and I was also a founder member of the
society. I think we chose 'linguistic ideas' because in one interpretation
'history of linguistics' could be taken to have a narrower remit from when
'linguistics' became an academic discipline. The idea was to include all
types of thinking about language, whether it could be construed as
'scientific' or not, and whether it was associated with philosophy,
literature, or any other field. So, like most of the respondents I would
favour leaving things as they are.
Best wishes
Wendy
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