Thorstein Veblen and Linguistic Theory

Abstract

; UT VEBLEN was an economist and sociologist!' the reader may exclaim on B reading the title of this paper. 'What connection can there be between Thorstein Veblen and linguistic theory?' The answer is that he discussed linguistic matters explicitly in one passage at the very end of his Theory of the Leisure Class,x a passage which deserves to be better known among linguistic analysts than it is, and that the rest of his work develops several concepts which are of considerable usefulness in understanding, not only socially conditioning factors, but some of the mechanisms underlying the use of language and linguistic change. USAGE, SPELLING, AND CONSPICUOUS WASTE. The concluding paragraphs of Chapter XIV ('The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture') of Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class are devoted to the classics and the perpetuation of classicism as 'conforming so closely to the requirements of archaism and waste' which, according to Veblen, are the standards of virtue of the leisure class. Veblen correlates 'classic' usage with obsolescence and futility: