Linguistic Analogism and Anomalism

The history of linguistic studies is expounded falsely as a cumulative process of a linear growth of knowledge and a series of unique individual inventions (B. Fajkus 1997: 29). Rupturist philosophers, however, claim that it consisted of coherent paradigms and ruptures repeated in periodic cycles. Its fates may be regarded as a story of perpetual oscillation between three extremes: firstly, analogism enjoying normative morphology, secondly, anomalism indulging in hermeneutic semiotics, and thirdly, comparativism giving preference to interlingual comparison and historical grammar. Table 2 attempts to give a broader generalisation of the former two paradigms as they reappear at different stages of history. If we plot their historical occurrence on chronological diagrams, we may observe regular periodic patterns. There are regular ups and downs in economic and social growth, which are manifested in literature as periods of classicist and romantic taste. In linguistics these changes in taste lead to periodic revivals of analogism and anomalism.

ANALOGISM

ANOMALISM

analogy: harmony, regularity, perfection proportion: proportionate measure langue: abstract language system centralism: received literary standard graphocentrism: stress on spelling, script and orthography stress on written standard normativism: ideal perfect norm naturalism: words arisen in imitation of natural sounds determinism: language as a product of natural cultural development physicalism: objective reference content: plain meaning denoting physical contents reflection: concepts and signs are reflections of outer referents

anomaly: exceptions, aberrations distorsion: distorted forms parole: individual spoken speech regionalism: regional dialects phonocentrism: stress on phonetic aspects, prosody and pronunciation stress on spoken speech eccentricism: romantic extremes conventionalism: words arisen as conventional signs. arbitrarism: language as a code and an intentional product allegorism: allegoric interpretation icon: symbolic icons standing for spiritual traditions expression: sign as an expression of subjective feelings

Table 2. The opposition of analogism and anomalism in linguistics

The analogist paradigm was dominant in the classic age of Greece as well as in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Its tenets may be extended to a general paradigm of normative linguistics, which pursues the study of language with the aim to distil the pure gold of the correct literary standard. This purism is justified by needs of school education and professional training. Normative studies do not aim at a deeper understanding of linguistic reality but aspire to receive a perfect literary standard worth mastering by the official state bureaucracy and common people. They regard linguistics as a sort of practical skill, art or handicraft (techné). They confuse grammar for techné grammatiké ‘the art of writing’ and rhetoric for ars dictandi ‘the art of speaking’. When dealing with phonetics they tended to reduce it to orthoepy ‘the art of correct pronunciation’. Instead of distinguishing clearly grammar and graphemics, they conceive both as orthography, ‘the art of correct writing’.

Extract from Pavel Bělíček: Historical Perspectives of English Studies in Czech Humanities. A Working Program of English Studies. Prague 2001, pp. 11-13.