Theory groups and the study of language in North America
Subtitle: a social history
By: Stephen O. Murray.
Series: Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science.; v. 69
Publisher: J. Benjamins
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Amsterdam; Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 594
Subjects: Linguistics -- United States -- History.
Description: Theory Groups in the Study of Language in North America provides a detailed social history of traditions and "revolutionary" challenges to traditions within North American linguistics, especially within 20th-century anthropological linguistics. After showing substantial differences between Bloomfield's and neo-Bloomfieldian theorizing, Murray shows that early transformational-generative work on syntax grew out of neo-Bloomfieldian structuralism, and was promoted by neo-Bloomfieldian gatekeepers, in particular longtime Language editor Bernard Bloch. The central case studies of the book contrast the (increasingly) "revolutionary rhetoric" of transformational-generative grammarians with rhetorics of continuity emitted by two linguistic anthropology groupings that began simultaneously with TGG in the late-1950s, the ethnography of communication and ethnoscience.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [503]-576) and index.
An earlier version was presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--1979.