General linguistics is notoriously difficult to position in either the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences departments. This is mirrored in historical debates, which were especially prominent between 1880 and 1930, when linguists were discussing methodological issues in order to define their discipline. The linguists turned to the natural sciences to justify their academic discipline and ties with humanities and social sciences were also present. This paper focuses on a research method through which I aim to show these ties: the linguistic questionnaire.
Using the questionnaire, linguists such as Jules Gilliéron (1854-1926) argued they could do research with scientific, observational rigour; methodical, with comparable results and systematic notation. The results of the linguistic questionnaires were presented as maps, with Gilliéron’s Atlas linguistique de la France (1902-1910) as a famous example.
While the linguistic questionnaires were primarily aimed at collecting different dialects in a systematic way, the research tool developed into a method to also collect social factors which could have an effect on the subject’s spoken language. This change of focus can be pinpointed as a direct influence on general linguistics from the new discipline of sociology, which the collaboration between linguist Antoine Meillet (1866-1936) and sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) illustrates. Through the case of the linguistic questionnaire, I aim to show how general linguistics evolved as a discipline between the humanities, the natural and the social sciences.
