The past is a future priority

Abstract

A sensitisation to the disciplinary past offers a way forward for sociolinguistic inquiry. Historicisation may add reflexive distance to our current concerns and debates. It may serve to detect, put into perspective and ease epistemological and ideational tensions. It is equally useful for determining the extent to which past ideas and practices linger among us, and for clarifying the effects of such forms of retention. Historicisation may be brought to bear on the ways in which we engage with our objects of study, and on the ways in which we understand our acts of engagement. A critical interest in the disciplinary past could provide a shared historical ground for all strands of sociolinguistic inquiry. It could help us to counteract disciplinary fragmentation, while at the same time stimulate disciplinary renewal and constructive exchange. For these reasons - I argue - a sensitisation to the history of sociolinguistics is of immediate relevance to the readership of the IJSL.