General Linguistics and the Study of Dutch

In their paper on structuralism in Belgium and the Netherlands, Parret & Van de Velde (1980: 145) argue that a number of fundamental texts written in Dutch "have had no international influence, although these books, once translated into German or English, would undoubtledly have become well known works of linguistic and philosophical structuralism". Among the books they mention one finds Stutterheim's voluminous dissertation Het Begrip Metaphoor ('The Concept of Metaphor') from 1941. The first four hundred pages of this work are devoted to a historiography of the concept of metaphor; they are followed by an extensive systematic-critical discussion of the same concept. Parret & Van de Velde maintain that Stutterheim, and also Dutch scholars such as H.J. Pos, A. Reichling, and P.A. Verburg, could be categorized as structuralists. Structuralism in their publications shows up largely in its concerns with problems of theory formation in linguistics and a definition of the object of this science, as well as in philosophical questions about the relationship between language and the world, language and experience, and language and subject. Parret & Van de Velde conclude: