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Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 6:1 (1979) ► pp.57–76

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Contemporary Reactions to Rudolf Meringer’s Speech Error Research

 | University of Sussex
Published online: 1 January 1979
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.6.1.05cut
Summary
Rudolf Meringer (1859–1931) published two large collections of speech errors, in 1895 and 1908. Although the idea that errors in spontaneous speech might be of linguistic interest did not originate with Meringer, he was the first to produce a large collection of error data and a detailed theoretical analysis of error phenomena. Contemporary reaction to Meringer’s two speech error books is analysed in this essay. Firstly, direct comment at the time, which ranged from enthusiastic praise to dismissal of the project as trivial and uninteresting, is analysed; dismissive reactions, it is seen, came from those who were in any case Meringer’s opponents on broader issues of theoretical orientation. The following section deals with the correctness of Meringer’s analysis of error phenomena, which met its chief challenge at the time from Sigmund Freud’s contention that speech errors were interesting for reasons not of linguistics but of individual psychopathology. Thirdly, Meringer’s devotion to the observational method is described; this led him into a controversy with contemporaries who preferred the research methods of experimental psychology.
Résumé
Rudolf Meringer (1859–1931) a publié deux collections importantes d’erreurs de parole, le premier en 1895 et l’autre en 1908. Bien que l’idée selon laquelle les erreurs dans le discours spontané puissent être d’un intérêt linguistique ne remonte pas à Meringer, c’est lui qui fut le premier à compiler une collection assez vaste de données dans ce domaine et à en faire une analyse rigoureuse. Cet article discute surtout de la réaction aux écrits de Meringer. On fait d’abord une analyse des commentaires directs de l’époque qui vont de la louange enthousiaste jusqu’au rejet du projet comme étant trivial; on remarque que les réactions négatives viennent de ceux qui étaient opposés à Meringer sur des questions plus vastes de linguistique théorique. La section suivante de l’article traite de l’exactitude de l’analyse des phénomènes d’erreur proposée par Meringer, analyse risquée et courageuse à l’époque où Sigmund Freud affirmait que les erreurs de la parole relevaient beaucoup plus de la psychopathologie individuelle que de la linguistique. L’article se termine avec une description de la méthode empirique de Meringer, basée sur l’observation, source de controverse avec ceux qui préféraient les méthodes de recherche de la psychologie expérimentale.
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