Clandestine Revival of Prague Linguistic Circle in Prague, 1945-1968

In the decade preceding World War II, the so-called Prague Linguistic Circle (Prague linguistic school) developed the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure. While the original circle practically ceased to exist during World War II, its ideas were clandestinely revived and developed during the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1948-1989). Just after WWII, digital computers were entering the scene, promising to provide researchers of all branches with a powerful tool. Linguists, like other researchers, were not entirely united as to their hopes in the new technology. In the Soviet bloc, the visions of using the computer were also influenced by the ideological pertinence of such use. While the use of computers by mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, and engineers was undisputed, using computers to aid linguists was not supported in the early 1950s. Expelled from the Faculty of Arts for their wishes to do linguistics on computers, the Circle found refuge at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. While initially the linguists took their new location only as a substitute to the desired one, they gradually won their position among linguists abroad and after 1989, revived the original name. The presentation will focus on the effects of this forced institutional position of linguists close to the departments of mathematics and computer science and will analyse the development of computer-based linguistics in this context.