So, this time we're going to talk about The Prague School! to start with the subject, first we need to introduce someone REALLY important to it. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are talking about Vilém Mathesius!
a Czesh Anglicist who studied (and latter started to taught) at the Caroline University of Prague~
1911 was a year for important linguistic-related events. Saussure's lectures on synchronic linguistics and Boas's Handbook publication, and the first call for Mathesius of a new non-historical approach to language study took place on that year.
Around Mathesius here came to be a circle of like-minded linguistic scholars that began to meet for regular discussion (about linguistic-related things and others) and came to be recognized as the "Prague School". (At least until the WWII).
The hallmark of the Prague School was that it saw language in term of function. Not that they see it as completely fulfilling a purpose, but they analysed a given language with a view to show the respective functions played by the various structural components in the use of the entire language.
Prague linguistics looked at languages as one might look at a motor, seeking to understand what jobs the various components were doing and how the nature of one component determined the nature of others.
