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Nommer le préhistorique au xixe siècle. Linguistique et transferts lexicaux

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Blanckaert C.

Organon

2017

vol. 49

57-103

It is frequently assumed that the nomination of the human sciences is a regulating element, a vector and marker of identity. The words chosen to designate them are part of a complex process of certification and agreement involving collective choices. They promote paradigm stability and, thus defining their research field, disciplines make themselves known and, above all, recognized. The history of prehistory, a science still in its infancy as it was said around 1860, ideally obeys this canon. Nevertheless, the term prehistory was considered vague and elastic. Since its inception, in fact, prehistory was a crossroads science, adopting an eclectic approach and claiming for itself the analytical tools of geology and linguistics, ethnography’s evolutionism and the patrimonial outlook of earlier antiquarians. We no longer remember prehistory’s vocation to cross disciplinary borders and to encompass different fields of study. Historians have too narrowly focused their researches on its archaeological dimension, forgetting (or rather censoring the fact) that the word prehistory, supposed to foster and express consensus, was originally contested. The word spread in the European languages since the 1840s. However, since established sciences claimed its object for themselves, competing and non–equivalent denominations were invoked against it during the 19th century: archaeo–geology, comparative ethnography, linguistic palaeontology, palaeoethnology, primitive anthropology, palaetaphia ... . Thus, the identity problem was not solved during the foundational decades. Lexicography is a good indicator of these dissensions. It shows that sciences, in order to establish themselves, have to reshape taxonomies of knowledge, redefine accepted boundaries, and externally justify their right to exist.

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Nommer le préhistorique au xixe siècle. Linguistique et transferts lexicaux