The shift in historical studies to investigate language and speech as an object of research is known as the "Linguistic Shift." It first appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians started delving into how language, beliefs, and ideals shape identity and community. This shift in historical studies towards using representation as a reliable source of knowledge marked a new interdisciplinarity. This course introduces the linguistic turn, starting with Gareth Stedman Jones's work and demonstrating how it serves as a type of fulcrum for social historians interested in examining the role of language, values, and ideals in identity and community formation.
The rigorous self-reflexive focus that marked the linguistic turn in history at its inception has persisted to this day. Discourse analysis was made accessible to many historians with the publication of Metahistory by White (1973), who used it to examine the discourse of historians. The development of historians' individual and social identities through their discourses about the past was more important than trying to recreate how historical identities were generated in language (Canning, 1994).
The fact that H. White's work offers a wide range of interpretive avenues for examining the Past is one of its numerous strengths. One method of "moving or directing the description of an item, event, or person away from one meaning, in order to wring out additional diverse and maybe even many interpretations" is the troping process (from metonymy through metaphor and synecdoche and eventually to irony) (Popescu, 2009).
In this essay, the "linguistic turn" is discussed in relation to contemporary post-structuralist adaptations of these philosophical critiques of representation and modern theories of language. The essay makes the case that the linguistic turn happens when language is viewed as the foundation of social practise rather than as an instrument for it (Fynsk, 2001).
The linguistic change has also been broken down into three stages. The early 20th century was marked by a drive to simplify poetic language, and the second part of the century, influenced by postmodern philosophy, was marked by inflated vocabulary once more (Birns, n.d.).
In sum, the linguistic turn constituted a paradigm shift in historical studies by examining how language, beliefs, and ideals contribute to the creation of identity and communities. It provided a fresh form of interdisciplinary study in history and was distinguished by a keen self-reflection. The linguistic turn, which has been broken down into three stages, is still significant today. This paradigm change has had a significant impact on historical studies and given rise to fresh perspectives on the past.
