Prague School
Czech structuralist movement
The Prague School was a group of linguists active in Prague from the 1920s through 1930s, influential in developing structural approaches to language.
They emphasized the *function* of linguistic elements—how sounds, grammar, and style serve communicative purposes.
Their work on phonology distinguished meaningful sound contrasts (phonemes) from mere variants, shaping modern linguistics.
Key figures included Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy.
- structuralismAnalysis through underlying systems
- functionalismTheory emphasizing purposes and roles
- stylisticsStudy of expressive language
- foregroundingMaking textual features prominent
- semioticsStudy of signs, symbols
distinctive features · phonology · morphology · text analysis · defamiliarization · poetic language · literary device · phonetics · syntax · Czech · semantics · phoneme · literary criticism · prosody · 1920s · intertextuality · opposition · binary
- linguisticslinguistics, phoneme, phonemes, morpheme, morphemes
- literary criticismliterary theory, literary analysis, close reading, New Criticism, criticism
- Prague Schoolphoneme, distinctive features
- Rudolfine PragueTycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, cabinet of curiosities, court painters
- Slavic criticismformalism, structuralism, Bakhtin, defamiliarization, Medvedev
- structuralismLevi-Strauss, structuralism, structural analysis, signifier, signified