Fragmented memory in a global age: The place of storytelling in modern language curricula

Abstract

The article presents a hypothesis that seeks to explain the present difficulties of modern languages as playing out the consequences of the demise of philology and the rise of linguistics in its place. While the founding gesture of the latter as a distinct discipline was to exclude cultural and social considerations, the former is an account of the cultural memory of the language. With the demise of philology, modern languages have lost their disciplinary unity, and hence the principle upon which to construct coherent curricula. As a result, they have lost their intellectual authority. The article proposes a revisionist analysis of the philological tradition, divesting it of its essentialist..