The CHL is an authoritative, chronologically arranged account of the history of the study of language, including (late) twentieth-century ‘recent history.’ Its chapters, written by leading scholars, show how language as a focus of study has been established over the centuries. While western traditions are emphasized, the volume also discusses others. It is designed to be an essential reference for researchers, teachers, and students in linguistics and related disciplines. The CHL is divided into three parts, each with an Introduction describing the larger context of interest in language: I. Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Periods; II. Renaissance to Late Nineteenth Century; III. Late Nineteenth through Twentieth Century (through the mid 1950s, and 1950s to 2000). These groupings are related to their pertinence to the history of linguistics and the way conceptualizations about language have been connected to the different philosophical, religious, and political concerns and sociocultural practices of the times.

This introduction is a synopsis of the major trends in linguistics discussed in Part III (seventeen chapters).

Part IIIA (late nineteenth century -- 1960s) describes the decline of comparative studies, the rise and culmination of structuralist and descriptive synchronic linguistics, and the different currents in Europe and North America (four chapters).

In Part IIIB (1960s-2000, ‘recent history,'a time of considerable growth in linguistic scholarship, thirteen chapters), the following topics are considered:

• - the rise, development and impact of formal linguistics (i.e., generative approaches to syntax, semantics and phonology, and alternatives) as well as formal and non-formal cognitive approaches;

• - the turn to language use and function: new modes/tools of linguistic inquiry (methods, corpora and lexicography, technology); functionalist reactions to formalism (e.g., pragmatics, American functionalism, systemic functional linguistics); language as a communicative spoken activity (conversation analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, critical approaches to language use);

• - new interdisciplinary subfields: sociolinguistics (variational sociolinguistics, interactional sociolinguistics, language policy and planning), anthropological linguistics, psycholinguistics;

• - historical linguistics (language change, grammaticalization), contact linguistics, pidgins and creoles, approaches to universal-typological linguistics;

• - applied linguistics (language teaching/learning, interdisciplinarity).

The conclusion discusses the editors’ sense of the direction of theoretical developments in linguistics since the 1960s: the general movement towards contextualization.

The CHL is an authoritative, chronologically arranged account of the history of the study of language, including (late) twentieth-century ‘recent history.’ Its chapters, written by leading scholars, show how language as a focus of study has been established over the centuries. While western traditions are emphasized, the volume also discusses others. It is designed to be an essential reference for researchers, teachers, and students in linguistics and related disciplines. The CHL is divided into three parts, each with an Introduction describing the larger context of interest in language: I. Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Periods; II. Renaissance to Late Nineteenth Century; III. Late Nineteenth through Twentieth Century (through the mid 1950s, and 1950s to 2000). These groupings are related to their pertinence to the history of linguistics and the way conceptualizations about language have been connected to the different philosophical, religious, and political concerns and sociocultural practices of the times.