The traces of Humboldt’s Sprachphilosophie in the theory and practice of language study within the Flemish Movement, 1830 to 1914

Early 19th-century intellectual life in Germany was deeply marked by the ideas of romanticism, a literary, philosophical, and cultural philological trend that arose at the end of the 18th century, and eventually fostered a ‘positivist’ countermovement. The German (and specifically ‘Prussian’) model of science and university teaching and administration gradually spread over Western Europe, and had a major impact on the development of the ‘philological’ disciplines, which saw the emergence of the ‘science of languages’, i.e. linguistics. One of the prominent representatives of the new science was the Prussian diplomat and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1765-1835). During the nineteenth century, Humboldt’s philosophy exerted considerable influence on thinking about language and language policy in Central and Western Europe. The objective of this doctoral project is to analyse the influence of Humboldt’s Sprachphilosophie on the ideas of the Flemish Movement in relation to language and nation. The analysis will focus on the period 1830-1914, i.e. from the Belgian Revolution to the advent of the Great War, and will cover theoretical as well as more ‘practice-oriented’ (e.g., spelling reform, language policies, institutional reforms, etc.) approaches to the Dutch language in Flanders.