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The Linguistic Turn

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the nature, origins and consequences of the linguistic turn in the human sciences. A diffuse notion which has been used to designate different methodological programmes in the human sciences since the end of the 1960s, the linguistic turn is easier to define in terms of what it rejects rather than what it embraces. Most generally, it rejects the view that language is a neutral medium for transmitting what is given in experience. The linguistic turn accordingly consists in a shift of focus from experience to language, which in turn has resulted in changes in the self-understanding, character and methods of the human sciences. Any more specific characterisations of the linguistic turn would have to take into account the different theories of language that have been put forward within all three major Western philosophical traditions of the 20th century (the German hermeneutic tradition, the French structuralism and poststructuralism and the Anglo-American analytic and postanalytic philosophy). Broadly, three kinds of debates have taken place within these traditions (and to some extent between them) which all have later been taken to be manifesting the linguistic turn: first, debates on what we can know and say about (extralinguistic) reality at all; second, debates on what is or should be the nature of science in general and the human or social science in particular, given the complex relationship between language and reality; third, debates on the practicians’ new methodological programmes inspired by the changed view of this relationship. The article attempts to sketch some of the most relevant of those debates, focusing on the linguistic turn in the philosophy of history and in the history of political thought in particular. It is often assumed that those debates have resulted in a universal rejection of scientific objectivity and the possibility of any knowledge of reality, which in turn has led to the dissolution of any demarcation between science, art and philosophy. This article argues that this has not been the case. It is clearly possible to embrace the linguistic turn without approving of its more sceptical versions or consequences. The refutation of naive empiricist notions of ’facts’ and ’objective knowledge’ does not yet compel us to reject the ideal of objective knowledge altogether. We are still capable of comparing different theories and interpretations by relying on different criteria, paying attention not just to their empirical adequacy, but also to their power of explanation, comprehensiveness and relevance. Also, the fact that in history the aim is often to explain through providing a narrative account of the events does not yet preclude critically evaluating and comparing the different interpretations underlying the narrative accounts. The article concludes with a discussion of the Cambridge history of political thought as an example of a ‘post-linguistic-turn’ approach

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