Shelf life and time horizons in the historiography of linguistics

Summary The aim of this paper is to outline an approach to linguistic historiography which is informed by 20th-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, but which is formulated in linguistic terms. The key concept is that of the ‘time horizons’ which delimit the context which is relevant to the interpretation of an event or text. The idea of the time horizon is here illustrated by the everyday notion of the shelf-life of consumable items. The main thrust of the argument is that the interpretation of historical events and texts necessarily involves not one but two cognitive contexts, that of the historical protagonist and that of the modern observer. The approach sets up a three-level contrast between chronography (getting the facts right), reconstruction (recounting the historical story), and interpretation (making sense of the past story in terms of present-day understandings).