Comparative Linguistics Has Unsavoury Roots, Here's Why

In their exhaustive  review of researcher Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn’s book  Archives of Origins, philosopher-Indologist Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee examine the emergence of racism in the humanities. They argue that Western linguistics (referred simply as linguistics from here on) and anthropology were not separate fields of inquiry, at least initially.

“To understand the real origins of the new science of language,” Adluri and Bagchee write, “we must return to the complex of methods, ideologies, and inquiries… that will, in time, give rise not only to nineteenth-century comparative linguistics but also its coordinate, nineteenth-century racial anthropology.”

Comparative linguistics and linguistic classification would later play a destructive and disruptive role in the history and polity of India.

Comparative linguistics is a branch of linguistics involved in the “scientific” study of languages, by comparing and classifying them based on three principles: genetic, typological, and areal.

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