Philology () is the study of
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
in
oral and
written historical sources. It is the intersection of
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may rang ...
,
literary criticism
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...
,
history
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...
, and
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
with strong ties to
etymology.
Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts and oral and written records, the establishment of their
authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering
comparative and
historical linguistics.
Classical philology studies
classical languages. Classical philology principally originated from the
Library of Pergamum and the
Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the
Roman and
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...
. It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
, where it was soon joined by philologies of other European (
Romance,
Germanic,
Celtic,
Slavic, etc.), Asian (
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
Persian,
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
,
Chinese, etc.), and African (
Egyptian,
Nubian, etc.) languages.
Indo-European studies involve the comparative philology of all
Indo-European languages.
Philology, with its focus on historical development (
diachronic analysis), is contrasted with
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
due to
Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of
synchronic analysis. While the contrast continued with the emergence of
structuralism and the emphasis of
Noam Chomsky on
syntax, research in historical linguistics often relies on philological materials and findings.
Etymology
The term ''
philology
Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...
'' is derived from the
Greek (''philología''), from the terms (''phílos'') 'love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend' and (''lógos'') 'word, articulation, reason', describing a love of learning, of literature, as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of . The term changed little with the Latin ''philologia'', and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the
Middle French
Middle French () is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the mid-14th to the early 17th centuries. It is a period of transition during which:
* the French language became clearly distinguished from the other co ...
''philologie'', in the sense of 'love of literature'.
The
adjective (''philólogos'') meant 'fond of discussion or argument, talkative', in
Hellenistic Greek, also implying an excessive ("
sophistic") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, (''philósophos'').
As an
allegory
As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...
of literary erudition, ''philologia'' appears in fifth-century postclassical literature (
Martianus Capella, ''De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii''), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature (
Chaucer,
Lydgate).
The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" (
historical linguistics) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding
sound laws and
language change, the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from
Giacomo Leopardi and
Friedrich Schlegel to
Nietzsche".
Branches
Comparative

The
comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages. Similarities between
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
and
European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named
Proto-Indo-European. Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what was, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and
deciphering the origins of older texts.
Textual
Philology also includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may rang ...
, trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose among ancient scholars in the Greek-speaking world of the 4th century BC, who desired to establish a standard text of popular authors for both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time, the original principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the
Bible. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to classical studies and medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work. The method produced so-called "critical editions", which provided a reconstructed text accompanied by a "
critical apparatus", i.e., footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants.
A related study method known as
higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in a historical context.
As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and
hermeneutics.
When text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts), scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions.
Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology,
especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as ''
new philology'' has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into the text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data.
Supporters of new philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations.
Cognitive
Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology considers these oral texts as the results of human mental processes. This science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems.
Decipherment
In the case of
Bronze Age literature, philology includes the prior
decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the
Egyptian,
Sumerian,
Assyrian,
Hittite,
Ugaritic, and
Luwian languages. Beginning with the famous decipherment and translation of the
Rosetta Stone by
Jean-François Champollion in 1822, some individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the
Ancient Near East and
Aegean. In the case of
Old Persian and
Mycenaean Greek, decipherment yielded older records of languages already known from slightly more recent traditions (
Middle Persian and
Alphabetic Greek).
Work on the ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century,
Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the
Behistun Inscription, which records the same text in
Old Persian,
Elamite, and
Akkadian, using a variation of
cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of
Sumerian.
Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by
Bedřich Hrozný.
Linear B, a script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by
Michael Ventris and
John Chadwick, who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as
Mycenaean Greek.
Linear A, the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the
Minoans, resists deciphering, despite many attempts.
Work continues on scripts such as the
Maya, with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of the phonetic approach championed by
Yuri Knorozov and others in the 1950s. Since the late 20th century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...
. The code is described as a
logosyllabic style of writing.
Contention
In English-speaking countries, use of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works of literature, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feelings following
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
.
Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
usage, and British academia, ''philology'' remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in
US English, and US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread. Based on the harsh critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, some US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly
scientistic study of language and literature.
Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the method is treated among other scholars, as noted by both the philologists R.D Fulk and Leonard Neidorf who have been quoted saying "This field "philology's commitment to falsification renders it "at odds with what many literary scholars believe because the purpose of philology is to narrow the range of possible interpretations rather than to treat all reasonable ones as equal". This use of falsification can be seen in the debate surrounding the etymology of the Old English character
Unferth from the heroic epic poem
Beowulf.
James Turner further disagrees with how the use of the term is dismissed in the academic world, stating that due to its branding as a "simpleminded approach to their subject" the term has become unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts of a nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and families".
In popular culture
In ''
The Space Trilogy'' by
C. S. Lewis, the main character, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist – as was Lewis' close friend
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the main characters in the science fiction film ''
Forbidden Planet'', is a philologist.
Philip, the main character of
Christopher Hampton's 'bourgeois comedy'
The Philanthropist, is a professor of philology in an English
university town.
Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, the main character in
Alexander McCall Smith's 1997 comic novel ''
Portuguese Irregular Verbs'' is a philologist, educated at Cambridge.
The main character in the
Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, ''
Footnote'', is a
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
philologist, and a significant part of the film deals with his work.
The main character of the science fiction TV show ''
Stargate SG-1'',
Dr. Daniel Jackson, is mentioned as having a PhD in philology.
See also
* ''
American Journal of Philology''
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* – Philology in China
* – Philology in Japan
References
External links
Philology in Runet��(A special web search through the philological sites of
Runet)
*
v: Topic:German philology
CogLit: Literature and Cognitive Linguistics*
{{Authority control
Academic disciplines
Historical linguistics
Writing
Textual scholarship