Copenhagen School (linguistics) - The Glossematic School

The Glossematic School

Brøndal emphasised that formal properties of a system should be kept apart from its substance. Accordingly, Hjelmslev presented, as the key figure of Copenhagen School in the 1930s, a formal linguistic fundament, which was later known as glossematics (the double duality of the linguistic sign). He formulated his linguistic theory together with Hans Jørgen Uldall as an attempt to analyse the expression (phonetics and grammar) and the meaning of a language on a coherent basis. He assumed that language wasn't the only instrument of communication (cf. the communication of deaf-mutes), and he was interested in a general theory of the signs of communication, semiotics or semiology.

More than the other schools, the Glossematic School referred to the teachings of Saussure, even though it was in many aspects connected with older traditions. Thus, it tried once more to combine logics and grammar. At any rate, Hjelmslev has taken over the psychological interpretation of the linguistic sign and thereby extended his study of the sign further than language as such.

The principal ideas of the school are:

• A language consists of content and expression.
• A language consists of a succession and a system.
• Content and expression are interconnected by commutation.
• There are certain relations in the succession and the system.
• There are no one-to-one correspondents between content and expression, but the signs may be divided into smaller components.

Even more than Saussure, the Copenhagen School is interested in the langue rather than parole. It represented in a pure form the idea that language is a form and not a substance. It studied the relational system within the language on a higher level of abstraction. Critics accuse the somewhat one-sided formalism of the school with words like "antihumanism" or "linguistics in an empty space".