The Linguistic Turn in Philosophy, Linguistics and Literature

1922, the year Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (in a German/English bilingual edition), became a milestone in the history of philosophy: the year in which the "linguistic turn" began. Wittgenstein moved the entire debate Locke, Kant and Mach had joined - the debate whether there actually are things out there, where we feel we see them, to a consideration of the statements, the language, with which we ultimately have to handle our recognition.

Wittgenstein fueled the debate he had raised over the next thirty years with considerations linguists came to appreciate. They had just taken a parallel course leading to similar results reflecting questions such as: How do we learn a language? How does a language create meaning.

Literary theory of the 1970s and 1980s thought took a wave of fresh inspiration from both - linguistics and philosophy - on its way from structuralism to poststructuralism. Authors of fiction adopted puzzling questions such as: Can we escape the universe of language, can we move our understanding beyond the concepts we need to speak about them?

The seminar - or module - should look into the three traditions which created the "linguistic turn". Is it really one and the same turn philosophers, linguists, literary theorists and authors claim to have witnessed? It should secondly discuss an interesting spectrum of texts both theoretical and literary.

Secondary Literature

• Katharina Rennhak. Sprachkonzeptionen im metahistorischen Roman. Diskursspezifische Ausprägungen des Linguistic Turn in Critical Theory, Geschichtstheorie und Geschichtsfiktion (1970-1990). (Münchner Studien zur Neueren englischen Literatur; Bd. 13). München: Fink, 2002.