The Prague School

The Prague School

The Prague Linguistic Circle or Prague school was an influential group of literary critics and linguists who came together in Prague with the common desire to create a new approach to linguistics. The most well-known period of the Circle is between 1926, its official launch, and the beginning of World War II, the time when Prague offered hope of freedom and democracy for artists and scholars in Central Europe. Their spirit of collective activity, vision of a synthesis of knowledge, and emphasis on a socially defined commitment to scholarship defined and motivated the Prague Circle.

Along with its first president, Vilém Mathesius, they included Russian émigrés such as Roman Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and Sergei Karcevsky, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars René Wellek and Jan Mukařovský. Their work constituted a radical departure from the classical structural position of Ferdinand de Saussure. They suggested that their methods of studying the function of speech sounds could be applied both synchronically, to a language as it exists, and diachronically, to a language as it changes. After the war, the Circle no longer functioned as a meeting of linguists, but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school or English linguists following the work of J. R. Firth and later Michael Halliday). It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics.