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Language Makers
Book by Harris, Roy
194 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1980
About the author
Roy Harris
154 books15 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He has also held university teaching posts in Hong Kong, Boston and Paris and visiting fellowships at universities in South Africa and Australia, and at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He has also held university teaching posts in Hong Kong, Boston and Paris and visiting fellowships at universities in South Africa and Australia, and at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
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June 28, 2026
As a non-linguist, I found the volume fascinating. Roy Harris, a linguistics professor at Oxford, was a thoroughgoing sceptic of the research program of modern linguistics. The Language Makers is a history of certain important paradigms in linguistics going back to Plato's Cratylus. The big three paradigms, for Harris, are surrogationalism, where words are regarded simply as signs of things; instrumentalism where language acts are understood as means of accomplishing human ends; and contractualism where language is understood as a set of arbitrary conventions agreed on by a community of language users.
In the second half of the book, Harris applies these three big paradigms polemically to try to show that the most important research programs in modern, post-Saussurean linguistics amount to somewhat naive revivals of each of these ancient accounts of language. Harris's focus is always on showing how certain educational situations, for instance the availability and authority of dictionaries, promote the emergence of certain theories, e.g., Saussurean structuralism perhaps describes the structure of a dictionary better than the structure of general language.
Whether you think he is right or not (I personally suspect he is), Harris consistently bundles difficult concepts into stimulating and lucid prose. He has a lively knack for presenting what seems to be a very plausible position and then immediately and almost effortlessly presenting what seems like a decisive counter argument. I recommend the book if this sounds like fun.
In the second half of the book, Harris applies these three big paradigms polemically to try to show that the most important research programs in modern, post-Saussurean linguistics amount to somewhat naive revivals of each of these ancient accounts of language. Harris's focus is always on showing how certain educational situations, for instance the availability and authority of dictionaries, promote the emergence of certain theories, e.g., Saussurean structuralism perhaps describes the structure of a dictionary better than the structure of general language.
Whether you think he is right or not (I personally suspect he is), Harris consistently bundles difficult concepts into stimulating and lucid prose. He has a lively knack for presenting what seems to be a very plausible position and then immediately and almost effortlessly presenting what seems like a decisive counter argument. I recommend the book if this sounds like fun.
Displaying 1 of 1 review