ABSTRACT
In the United States, supporters of a more scientific linguistics came together in 1924 to found the Linguistic Society of America. In the first issue of the journal sponsored by the new society, Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), one of its founders, lamented that ‘The layman-natural scientist, philologian, or man in the street-does not know that there is a science of language’ (Bloomfield 1925b: 1). Nothing was more important to the early members of the LSA than the status of their field as a science, and few would knowingly engage in any public activity that might jeopardize that status. An instructive example comes from Roland Grubb Kent (1877-1952), professor of Latin and comparative philology at the University of Pennsylvania, LSA secretary-treasurer 19241940 and 1941 president.
