ABSTRACT
Surveys' of 'linguistic theory' have become so numerous that a new one calls for some justification. A counterbalance could be attained by surveying linguistics as a 'model science' perpetually in the process of situating itself in respect to language. First, many of the issues in linguistics that preoccupy linguistic theorists today were recognized and deliberated by our predecessors. Second, linguistic theory is essentially a domain of work in progress, a discipline always in search of itself. Third, certain signs indicate that linguistic theory has for some years been moving into a phase of stagnation and diminishing returns. Therefore, to examine linguistic theories as discourse constructions is by no means to discount their conceptual importance, but to insist on attending very carefully to the emergence of those conceptions within the original discourse before proceeding on to the more usual stages of abstraction and paraphrase.
