Search results for "Conceptual History"

On the Conceptual History of the Term Lingua Franca

2015

This paper aims to give an outline of the development of the term “Lingua Franca”. Initially the proper name of an extinct pidgin, to “Lingua Franca”, the term has become a common noun, used with regard to language contact phenomena in general – at first specifically for pidgins and trade languages, but now for all vehicular languages. This broader usage is especially prominent in the field of research known as “English as a lingua franca” (ELF). Using ELF as an example, it is shown that the modern usage is partly inconsistent and can be misleading, as it connects a positive feature of the original Lingua Franca, viz linguistic equality, with a language with native speakers like English, wh…

Second chamber, ‘congress of ambassadors’ or federal presidency : Parliamentary and non-parliamentary aspects in the European Council's rules of proc…

2015

SUMMARYThe development of the European Union (EU) regime, with the frequent changes of institutions and their competencies by treaty revisions, allows for new opportunities for parliamentary studies. This article discusses the role and competencies of the European Council (EC) in the EU regime, using the heuristic and methodological resources of procedural commentaries, parliamentary rhetoric, conceptual history and political regime analysis. This study is a textual analysis, based on the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and especially on the EC's rules of procedure. The Lisbon Treaty and the respective rules of procedure serve as key documents that fix the rules, the framework and the margin of manoeuvr…

Les Temps modernes et le tournant transcendantal. Blumenberg, Kant et la question du monde

2012

International audience; Blumenberg’s phenomenology of the history of concepts couldn’t overlook Kantian inventions to escape the dead ends of metaphysics. Kant constitutes a decisive help in mapping the ruptures of Modern Age. On the one hand, the cosmogonical essays of the precritical period illustrate reason’s typically modern self-assertion. On the other hand, the transcendental turn stands for a radicalization of Modern Age towards the Enlightenment. But Blumenberg also pays attention to what, in Kant, disturbs the modern project of reason’s self-authorization. Transcendental philosophy always calls for a new beginning, because it anticipates its possible failure.

(Un)Natural and contractual international society: A conceptual inquiry

2011

This article offers a critical perspective on one of the central concepts of IR and the English School of IR in particular, namely the concept of international society. It argues that the moral agency of international society and its ‘naturalness’ were affirmed simultaneously with the marginalization of the concept of societas designating contractual political relations. The article traces the concept of contracted societas back to the work of Hugo Grotius, an acclaimed founder of the ‘international society’ tradition. By placing Grotius’ use of the concept in the context of ancient and early modern discussion of political alliances and partnerships, it demonstrates that politically contra…

Four aspects of politics in Max Weber’s Politik als Beruf

2019

The article offers a rereading of Weber’s Politik als Beruf as a conceptualisation of politics contingent and controversial activity in terms of the four aspects of politics: politicisation, polity, politicking and policy. Weber discusses politics as a concept abstracted from its content. All four aspects can be found in his exposition of the concept. Weber mentions first policy as the direction of politics and demarcates his focus on the state-type polities. Then, he presents the formula on politics as striving for power, consisting of chances to politicise its distinct shares, and discusses historical types of professional politicians and their styles of politicking. Weber illustrates th…

Representation, nation and time : the political rhetoric of the 1866 parliamentary reform in Sweden

2000

Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal

2009

SUMMARY This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rheto…

The emergence of intangible capital : human, social, and intellectual capital in nineteenth century British, French, and German economic thought

2016

Since the late 1950s the concept of human capital, understood as the stock of knowledge, skills, and abilities that determine individual productivity, has become one of the central tools with which economists explain both individual success and economic growth. During the latter half of the 20th century complementing concepts such as social capital, meaning the value of social networks and norms of reciprocity, and intangible capital, meaning the investments in knowledge and innovation generation, have emerged. The term intellectual capital is sometimes used as a major concept to bind different forms of intangible capital. This study focuses on the conceptual equivalents of these ideas in 1…

A Qualitative and Quantitative Study on Ancient Latin Texts Concerning the Concept of aether : Some Methodological Considerations

2022

My study focuses on the semantic analysis of an ambiguous Latin word, aether, which may roughly be translated as ‘celestial substance’. The study is carried out by utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods on a digital text corpus containing Latin literature dating from ca. 200 BCE to 200 CE. In this paper, the compilation process and the contents of the corpus are described. Beside qualitative research (close reading), various computational methods are implemented on the corpus (distant reading). Of the latter, cosine similarity and correspondence analysis are discussed in this paper. I will explicate one way of combining qualitative and quantitative methods by assigning numerica…

Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal

2009

Summary: This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rhet…