Emma Mojet
University of Amsterdam

Newspaper cutting from Leidsch Dagblad, 1928, on the opening of the First International Congress of Linguists in The Hague. On the first row, from left to right, J. Schrijnen, C.C. Uhlenbeck, P. Kretschmer, A. Meillet, and S. Feist.

Why congresses?

The organisation of an international congress of a discipline marks a noteworthy stage in the development of a discipline. Taking a broader perspective, the many first disciplinary congresses held around 1900 also mark a significant stage in the institutionalisation and internationalisation of the disciplinary system in general. Historians have signalled a “wave of congresses” being held in numerous disciplines in both the humanities and the sciences throughout the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century. [1] Indeed, as Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn and Wolf Feuerhahn show, the number of congresses in the nineteenth century is dizzying. [2] In another paper, Rabault-Feuerhahn gives an enumeration of reasons for the this phenomenon: improvement of transport and information infrastructure, foundation of intellectual societies on a national level, and rapid specialisations within disciplines. [3] The trend started in 1798 with the Congress on Definitive Metric Standards in Paris and fits in with the processes of modern discipline formation which are commonly attributed to the nineteenth century. [4]

At the congresses of the various disciplines, the scholars of the field from different nationalities would come together and discuss the status, future course and central problems of their discipline. In this way, the congresses were a means to go beyond the national backgrounds of the scholars and start to normalise the methods of the discipline. Certain theories or practices were validated thanks to the gathering of an international community, something which failed in the separate national contexts. The international congress could function as a judge in such cases. [5]

On the other hand, scholars could use the international congresses as a tool to show off not only their scholarship but also their country. Official representatives often honoured the congress with their presence and the hosts organised banquets and excursions to entertain the members of the congress in their country. Unsurprisingly for the prevailing nationalistic tendencies of the nineteenth century, nationalities definitely did play a role at the international congresses. International congresses could become a political tool, to endorse and to advertise national scholarship.

Not only do “the congresses define the discipline by defining who can and who cannot participate”, as Rabault-Feuerhahn and Feuerhahn claim, “but they also have the ambition to bring together once again the various options and subfields of the discipline. The return to an overall perspective is fundamental and studying this gives an insight in processes of professionalisation and discipline formation.” [6] Indeed, the scholars assembling at international congresses came from different backgrounds, both with respect to nationality and disciplinarity. At the congress, scholars from different subfields met and exchanged ideas, research and methods. We can thus see the congress as a site of communication. Even though the congresses played prominent roles in the development of specific disciplines, we need to study the congress from a multidisciplinary point of view to study the influence of cross-disciplinary interactions. As Bart Karstens argued in his post of March 2017, the history of linguistics provides a useful laboratory for this kind of research.

This blog post discusses the first International Congress of Linguists, held in The Hague in 1928. We will look at who organised and who attended the congress, what topics were dealt with, and what the linguists decided as the international organisation of their discipline. This will tell us more about the development of the discipline of general linguistics. As we will see, the scholars gathered from different countries and had different academic backgrounds and interests. These backgrounds ranged from philology to anthropology, and from dialectology to psychology, illustrating the multidisciplinary background of the discipline of general linguistics. Even though the scholars were all working on the study of language, they had different intents for and views of the methods used in the discipline. At the congress, these all came together and were debated. Read more ›