ABSTRACT
In 1967, the German historian Reinhart Koselleck introduced conceptual history as an approach developed to write a lexicon of political and social concepts in modern times. This chapter focuses on his encounter with linguistics. It discusses how conceptual history in its linguistic orientation develops in three steps. The chapter looks at the representational dimension where concepts are anchored in a historical semantics. In traditional semantics, and even more so in lexicography, representation concerns the meaning of particular words in the lexicon. The chapter deals with the question of referentiality and extra-linguistic reality. Referentiality is the dimension through which language is orientated towards the world. Within semantics, the referential or denotational dimension of language has typically been treated as independent from the internal language system. The chapter also discusses the contextual aspects of concepts in action. It provides an example of how key concepts can be studied.
