Diversifying the History of Linguistics

The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas wishes to support efforts to diversify our field’s research, documentary base, and participants, while recognizing the challenges posed to doing so. Until relatively recent times, and indeed still today, academic institutions have been open only to a narrow range of people, whose historical work tended to focus on forebears who shared their profile. But they were not the only creators and analysts of linguistic ideas. Indeed, the contributions made by non-white, non-European, and/or non cis-male figures have been central to ideas about language, even if they remain badly under-represented. On this page, we draw attention to some recent relevant work to address these challenges, and warmly invite colleagues to add to it.

Women in Linguistics

• History of Women in Linguistics: an overview of contributions to the study of language made by women from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (page created by Fleur Dierickx, University of Leuven).

• List of Women Linguists: a more comprehensive list of female linguists, including currently active scholars.

• Ayres-Bennett, Wendy, and Helena Sanson (eds). 2020. Women in the History of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  [Brings together ground-breaking work on the role of women in the history of linguistics; explores the contributions of women in a wide range of spheres, from the production of dictionaries and grammars to language teaching methods and language policy; looks beyond the European context, examining such diverse topics as women's roles in the codification of Arabic, and the regulation and exploitation of women's speech in Japan.]

• Falk, Julia S. 1999. Women, Language and Linguistics: Three American Stories from the First Half of the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge.

  [Rather than the standard American story of an increasingly triumphant march of scientific inquiry towards structural phonology, Women, Language and Linguistics reveals linguistics where its purpose was communication; the appeal of languages lay in their diversity; and the authority of language lay in its speakers and writers. Julia S Falk explores the vital part which women have played in preserving a linguistics based on the reality and experience of language; this book finally brings to light a neglected perspective for those working in linguistics and the history of linguistics.]

The History of Linguistic Ideas from Non-Western Perspectives

• Auroux, Sylvain, E. F. K. Koerner, and Hans-Josef Niederehe. 2001. History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present. Vol. 1, sections I-X. Berlin: de Gruyter.

• Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé. 1991. Language and the Nation: The Language Question in Sub-Saharan Africa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

• Cram, David, Andrew Robert Linn, and Elke Nowak (eds). 1999. Traditions in Linguistics Worldwide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

• Kagame, Alexis. 1976. La Philosophie bantu comparée. Paris: Présence Africaine.

• Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1977. “Le français et les langues africaines.” In Liberté 3: Négritude et civilisation de l’universel, 238–53. Paris: Seuil.

• Kochhar, Rajesh. 2021. Sanskrit and the British Empire. New Delhi: Routledge India. 

• Lowe, John J. 2024. Modern Linguistics in Ancient India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Majeed, Javed. 2018. Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India. London: Routledge. 

• Mufwene, Salikoko, and Cécile Vigouroux. 2008. Globalization and Language Vitality: Perspectives from Africa. London: Continuum.

• Mufwene, Salikoko, John Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh (eds). 1998.  African-American English: Structure, History and Use. London: Routledge.

• Pugach, Sara. 2012. Africa in Translation: A History of Colonial Linguistics in Germany and Beyond, 1814-1945. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

• Sheyhatovitch, Beata, and Almog Kasher (eds). 2020. From Sībawayhi to ʼAḥmad Ḥasan al-Zayyāt: New Angles on the Arabic Linguistic Tradition. Leiden: Brill. 

• Tillemans, Tom J. F. 2022. Views from Tibet: Studies on Tibetan Buddhist Logic, the Philosophy of the Middle, and the Indigenous Grammatico-Linguistic Tradition. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. 

• Wolff, Ekkehard (ed.). 2019. A History of African Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Methodological Approaches to Diversifying the History of Linguistics

• Calhoun, Doyle. 2023. “Flipping the Script? Native-Speaker Linguists and Colonial Orthographies in Nineteenth-Century Senegal.” Historical Sociolinguistics 10, no. 1.

  [Native speakers' insights were crucial to early studies of African languages by European missionaries and colonial administrators, but were rarely credited; here, Calhoun highlights rare instances of Wolof native speakers authoring linguistic descriptions of the language, in which they also identify or record phonological features overlooked by Europeans.]

• Mairs, Rachel. 2024.  Arabic Dialogues: Phrasebooks and the Learning of Colloquial Arabic 1798-1945. London: UCL Press. 

  [This work uses historical phrasebooks as the primary source material for its investigation into attitudes towards the teaching and learning of Arabic.]