The rise of Soviet sociolinguistics from the ashes of Völkerpsychologie

Abstract Nineteenth‐century Russian philology was dominated by an approach derived from German Völkerpsychologie . Language and social consciousness were viewed as embodiments of “national‐popular psychology.” The shortcomings of this approach were becoming apparent at the end of the prerevolutionary period, but it was only in the 1920s that the hegemony of Völkerpsychologie was decisively challenged. Völkerpsychologie was attacked in the name of “objective psychology,” and concrete studies of the relationship between language and social structure were carried out. By the end of the 1920s, völkerpsychologische ideas were subsumed into a new and progressive form of sociological linguistics. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.