Historical Romance Linguistics: The Future of a Discipline

According to a German saying, in every discussion there comes the moment when “everything has been said, but perhaps not by everyone”. It seems to me that the thought-provoking critical cluster on the presumable death of a discipline (Dworkin 2003) offers an excellent synthesis of the arguments that can be put forward to demonstrate that Historical Romance Linguistics is a “vital” and “evolving” discipline. This vitality, it seems, is impressively represented by the recent, multifaceted Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik (Holtus, Metzeltin, and Schmitt 1988-2001) and the new Romanische Sprachgeschichte (Ernst, Glesgen, Schmitt, and Schweickard 2003-). So, why continue the debate, if tout va bien dans le meilleur des mondes? As I see it, there is a discrepancy between the “vitality” of excellent research represented by the work of distinguished scholars, and the uncertainties that surround the discipline in its epistemological and academic surroundings – not only in the US, but also in Europe. Considerations about the “vitality” of our discipline should include these two aspects. The 2003 debate forms part of a tradition of defenses et illustrations which goes back, at least in Germany, to the 1985 discussions of the Deutsche Romanistentag on Romance Philology as an “impossible discipline” (Nies and Grimm 1988). At that moment, even the most enthusiastic defenders of Romanistik admitted the “difficult unity” of the discipline; and two of the most distinguished German scholars of Romance Philology, Harald Weinrich and Hans Robert Jaus, described their scientific autobiography as an intellectual way out of the discipline. At the same moment, the Romanistentag set up a “section” on the history of Romance studies (Niederehe, and Schlieben-Lange 1988). In 1986, the international congress of the Societe de linguistique romane held at Trier did the same (Christmann 1989). This now twenty-year