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The Prague Linguistic Circle or "Prague school" (French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 Cercle linguistique de Prague, Czech
Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
 Pražský lingvistický kroužek) was an influential group of literary critics and linguist
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
s in Prague
Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis
Semiotic literary criticism

Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics....
 during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
 and semiotics
Semiotics

'Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, sign and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems....
. After World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school
Copenhagen School

The Copenhagen School is a term given to "schools" of theory originating in Copenhagen, Denmark. In at least four different scientific disciplines a theoretical approach originating in Copenhagen has been so influential that they have been dubbed "the Copenhagen School"...
 or English Firthian — later Hallidean
Michael Halliday

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is an Australian linguistics who developed an internationally influential grammar model, the systemic functional grammar ....
 — linguistics).






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The Prague Linguistic Circle or "Prague school" (French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 Cercle linguistique de Prague, Czech
Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
 Pražský lingvistický kroužek) was an influential group of literary critics and linguist
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
s in Prague
Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis
Semiotic literary criticism

Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics....
 during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
 and semiotics
Semiotics

'Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, sign and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems....
. After World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school
Copenhagen School

The Copenhagen School is a term given to "schools" of theory originating in Copenhagen, Denmark. In at least four different scientific disciplines a theoretical approach originating in Copenhagen has been so influential that they have been dubbed "the Copenhagen School"...
 or English Firthian — later Hallidean
Michael Halliday

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is an Australian linguistics who developed an internationally influential grammar model, the systemic functional grammar ....
 — linguistics). American scholar Dell Hymes
Dell Hymes

Dell Hathaway Hymes is a sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folkloristics whose work has dealt primarily with languages of the Pacific Northwest....
 cites his 1962 paper, "The Ethnography of Speaking," as the formal introduction of Prague functionalism to American linguistic anthropology (see Hymes, "Prague Functionalism," American Anthropologist, 82, 2, p. 398).

The Prague linguistic circle included Russian émigrés such as Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson

Roman Osipovich Jakobson, , was a Russian linguist and literary critic, associated with the Russian Formalism school. He became one of the most influential linguistics of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structuralism of language, poetry, and art....
, Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Nikolai Trubetzkoy

Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy Trubetzkoy was born into an extremely refined environment. His father was a first-rank philosopher whose lineage ascended to the medieval rulers of Lithuania....
, and Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars René Wellek
René Wellek

Ren? Wellek was a Czech Republic-United States comparative literature literary critic. Wellek, along with Erich Auerbach, is remembered as an eminent product of the Central European philology tradition....
 and Jan Mukarovský
Jan Mukarovský

Jan Mukarovsk? was a Czech people Literary theory and aesthetics theorist.He was professor at the Charles University of Prague. He is well known for his association with early structuralism as well as with the Prague Linguistic Circle, and for his development of the ideas of Russian formalism....
. The instigator of the circle and its first president was the eminent Czech
Czech people

Czechs are a West Slavs people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries....
 linguist Vilém Mathesius
Vilém Mathesius

Vil?m Mathesius was a Czech people linguist and literary historian, a scholar of English literature and Czech literature. His brother was Bohumil Mathesius....
 (President of PLC until his death in 1945).

The group's work before World War II was published in the Travaux Linguistiques and its theses outlined in a collective contribution to the World's Congress of Slavists. The Travaux were briefly resurrected in the 1960s with a special issue on the concept of center and periphery
Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theory found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and postcolonial literature....
 and are now being published again by John Benjamins. The group's Czech work is published in Slovo a slovesnost. English translations of the Circle's seminal works were published by the Czech linguist Josef Vachek in several collections.

External links

  • (includes a list of publications about the Circle)