Vilém Mathesius (, 3 August 1882 – 12 April 1945) was a Czech linguist, literary historian and co-founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle. He is considered one of the founders of structural functionalism in linguistics.
Mathesius was the editor-in-chief of two linguistic journals, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague (“Works of the Prague Linguistic Circle”) and Slovo a slovesnost ("Word and Verbal Art"), and the co-founder of a third, Nové Athenaeum. His extensive publications in these journals and elsewhere cover a range of topics, including the history of English literature, syntax, Czech stylistics, and cultural activism.
In addition to his work in linguistics, in 1912 he founded the department of English philology at Charles University, which was the first such department in Czech lands. His cousin, Bohumil Mathesius, was a poet and translator.
Vilém was born in Pardubice in Eastern Bohemia in Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic). When he was 11, his family moved west to Kolín. There he attended a classic gymnasium and took particular interest in the study of language, taking classes in Latin, Greek, German, and French, in addition to his native language of Czech. He also taught himself some Italian and Russian, and met with the pastor Čeněk Dušek for private lessons in English.
In 1908 Mathesius married Růžena Moravcová with whom he later had a son, Vilém (known as Vilík). Moravcová died unexpectedly in 1933 during a routine operation. Soon after, Mathesius married her sister, Antonia. Ten years later, in 1932, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the vertebrae, which caused him to be bed-ridden for a year and a half (1932–33).
Work with the Prague Circle
Mathesius first met Roman Jakobson, an influential Russian linguist and co-founder of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, soon after Jakobson's arrival in Prague in 1920. Slovo a slovesnost, which specializes in structuralist theory and Czech language, now continues (after a brief hiatus from 1942 to 1947) to be published as a quarterly.
Scholarship
Mathesius's scholarly work is typically divided into three periods based on his academic and intellectual focus and his increasing interest in linguistic concerns. Mathesius built up functionalism as an alternative to the approach of the Neogrammarians, which he criticized as failing to view language as a whole system, overly emphasizing written language at the expense of spoken, and neglecting the role of the speaker/writer in the production of language.
Mathesius is memorialized at Charles University by the Vilém Mathesius Centre for Research and Education in Semiotics and Linguistics and by the Vilém Mathesius Foundation for the Promotion of English and American Studies in Prague, which issues annual awards for the best MA and BA theses in the Department of English and American Studies.
Main works
- O potenciálnosti jevů jazykových (On the Potentiality of the Phenomena of Language ), 1911, English trans. J. Vachek 1964.
- Dějiny literatury anglické I–II (The History of English Literature I–II), 1910–1915
- Kulturní aktivismus (Cultural activism), 1925
- On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English, 1928 [published in English].
- Co daly naše země Evropě a lidstvu (What our lands contributed to Europe and mankind), 1940
- Možnosti, které čekají (Possibilities that await), 1944
- Obsahový rozbor současné angličtiny na základě obečně lingvistickém (A functional analysis of present-day English on a general linguistic basis), 1961 (publ. posthumously)
- Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost (Language, culture and poetic art), 1982
Citation
It is necessary to subject the language to such simplification that allows further work on it. (source: Vilém Mathesius: Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost (Language, culture and poetic art), 1982
References
Further reading
See also
- Prague Linguistic School