The Prague Linguistic Circle founded as Cercle Linguistique de Prague (in Czech Pražský lingvistický kroužek) in Prague, became known around the world as the Prague School. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics. After WWII, the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism (distinct from the Copenhagen school or English Firthian — later Hallidean — linguistics). Prague (Czech: Praha, see also other names) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. ... Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ... Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, both individually and grouped in sign systems. ... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ... Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (born 1925) is a linguist who developed an internationally influential grammar model, the systemic functional grammar (which also goes by the name of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). ...

The PLC included Russian emigrés such as Roman Jakobson, Nikolay Trubetzkoy, and Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars René Wellek and Jan Mukařovský. Among its founders was the eminent Czech linguist Vilém Mathesius (President of PLC until his death in 1945). Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 - July 18, 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. ... Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (Moscow, April 15, 1890 - Vienna, June 25, 1938) was a Russian linguist whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. ... René Wellek (1903-1995) was a Czech-German comparative literary critic. ... Jan MukaÅ™ovský (11 November 1891 Písek- 8 February 1975Prague) was a Czech literary critic and aesthetician. ... Vilém Mathesius (August 3, 1882–April 12, 1945) was a Czech linguist and literary historian, a scholar of English and Czech literature. ...

The Circle's work before WWII was published in the Travaux Linguistique and its theses outlined in a collective contribution to the World's Congress of Slavists. The Travaux were briefly resurrected in the 60s with a special issue on the concept of center and periphery and are now being published again by John Benjamins. The Circle's Czech work is published in Slovo a slovesnost. English translations of the Circle's seminal works were published by the Czech linguist Josef Vachek in several collections.

External links

• The Prague Linguistic Circle homepage
• Books about or by Prague school linguists available on Amazon