The idea of genie de la langue (‘genius or spirit of language’) was a popular theme in the study of modern languages around Europe between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the end of the nineteenth – a fairly specific, although broad, amount of time. Of course, there have been some later occasional developments around this theme, but the idea itself was not given much credit by the more serious specialists, and the aim of trying to convey a precise meaning of that phrase no longer appealed to grammarians. Those who made such attempts generally did so with ideological or nationalistic motives, and their discourse gained little value. As Henri Meschonnic put it, the idea was ‘banned from serious work in linguistics’, so to speak.

It is usual to say that the three great forces of identification that govern human communities, and their perception of similarities and differences, are the people (and the nation), religion, and language. In that respect, it is interesting to examine the historical coexistence that can be seen between the idea of genie de la langue and the first of these forces (we will set aside here the aspect of religion), at a time before the great political reconfiguration at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the emergence of the idea of nation – or, as Peter Burke put it, the time when national identity began to be more important than social identity. Thus we will briefly set out here a series of questions:

– Is there a link between the circulation of the idea of genie de la langue around Europe, and the emergence of this great political and cultural shift?