The Linguistic Turn and Narrative
The reorientation of historical theory around language, rhetoric, and narrative form, and the related movements — narrativism, postmodernism, microhistory, and postcolonial critique — that it helped set in motion.
Definition
The linguistic turn in history is the theoretical movement that treats language, rhetoric, and narrative form as constitutive of historical knowledge rather than as a transparent medium for reporting an independently given past.
Scope
This area covers the impact on history of the linguistic turn: the claim that historical understanding is shaped by the rhetorical and narrative forms in which it is written. It includes narrativist theory and emplotment, the postmodern challenge to historical realism, the microhistorical recovery of small-scale stories, and the subaltern and postcolonial critique of dominant historiographical narratives.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- To what extent does the language and narrative form of history shape its content?
- Is the difference between history and fiction one of form or of evidentiary commitment?
- How did the linguistic turn provoke the postmodern challenge to historical truth?
- How have microhistory and postcolonial critique reshaped whose stories history tells and how?
Key theories
- Tropology and emplotment
- White argued that historians give meaning to the past by emplotting it according to deep rhetorical structures — modes of emplotment, argument, and ideology rooted in master tropes.
- The social logic of the text
- Spiegel sought to mediate between linguistic and social approaches, treating texts as situated in a 'social logic' that links language to the material and social circumstances of their production.
History
The linguistic turn reached history in the 1970s, decisively through White's Metahistory, and intersected with poststructuralist theory to produce the postmodern challenge of the 1980s and 1990s. It both energized and was contested by microhistory, the subaltern studies project, and postcolonial critique, and prompted reflection on the relation of language to social context.
Debates
- Does narrative form undermine historical truth?
- Critics worried that emphasizing the rhetorical and fictive dimensions of narrative collapses the distinction between history and literature, while defenders argued that form and evidentiary discipline can coexist.
Key figures
- Hayden White
- Gabrielle Spiegel
- Carlo Ginzburg
- Dipesh Chakrabarty
- Frank Ankersmit
Related topics
Seminal works
- white1973
- spiegel1990
- iggers2005
Frequently asked questions
- What is the linguistic turn in history?
- It is the movement, prominent from the 1970s, that treats the language and narrative form of historical writing as shaping its meaning, rather than as a neutral window onto the past.
- Did the linguistic turn deny that the past is real?
- Most of its proponents did not deny the past's reality, but argued that our access to it is mediated by language and narrative form; critics nonetheless feared a slide into relativism.