title: A forgotten social science? Creating a place for linguistics in the historical dialogue.
abstract: The post-World War II era was one of great triumph for American linguists-and yet linguistics is all but absent from the historical literature on postwar social science. This paper aims to illuminate this curious situation: to understand its provenance, evaluate its merits, and contextualize it broadly. I argue that the historiographic lacuna results from two factors: (1) the opt-out of linguists from the wider American social science community, and (2) historical-developmental and -orientational factors that stand linguistics apart from the social science mainstream. The resultant isolation of linguistics has led to a parallel isolation in the historical literature. Ultimately, this paper poses a pivotal and timely question: How is the postwar social science space construed within the existing historiographic framework, and how should it be construed in order to maximize understanding? I propose a rethink of the received historiography centered on intellectual transformations and cross-disciplinary integration.
authors.affiliation: Department of Science Studies, Aarhus University.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Martin-Nielsen
mesh_terms: D001527:Behaviorism / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics / Q000266:history* / Q000379:methods; D012942:Social Sciences / Q000266:history* / Q000379:methods