Languages, Worlds, & Worldviews
The sustaining inspiration for REP comes from the unsurpassed philosophy of language of the German polyglot, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) who established in the Ethnnolinguistic tradition. More recent inspiration comes from Edward Sapir, and research in the field of Linguistic Anthropology in North America and elsewhere, from Humboldt Studies in Berlin, from Slavic Linguistics, especially the Polish Lublin School, and more recently,from Translation Studies. All approaches which move beyond formal stucuralist linguistics are welcome in the Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project: multilingual studies that take us into meaning, and beyond unilingual or reductive binary comparisons. REP and associated groups focus on the creativity of speakers and the on changing nature of linguistic worldviews and the way they influence one another.
