A social theory of language announced at the threshold of the twentieth century by Antoine Meillet

Abstract

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) defined langue as a social fact, a reality which is exterior to the individual and his will, and belongs to the society. He has never quoted Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) while discussing such concept, however the French sociologist’s conception was widely known in the intellectual milieu of the early twentieth century. Moreover, Antoine Meillet (1866-1936), a disciple of Saussure, while contributing to Durkheim’s newspaper, L’année sociologique (1905-1906), at about the same time that Saussure began the CGL (1907-1911) in Geneva, characterized language as a social fact referring to the concept established by Durkheim. This article deals with the linguistic ideas of Meillet that directly or indirectly influenced a large number of linguists for several decades of the twentieth century. The linguist dedicated himself to both the historical and comparative studies of Indo-European languages, as to the social and historical nature of language. The social aspect of his announced theory is the central theme of this historiographical-linguistic study.