| Using linguistics as a foundation while working within the field of German studies, other aspects of German culture can take on a new meaning when viewed through a language-based perspective. In my work, I argue that there were two shifts in general linguistic perspectives during the 18th and 19th centuries by German thinkers and how the result of these shifts are manifested in at least one social aspect of German culture: Wagnerian opera. I begin by examining the work of Grimm and Bopp not to expand on already well-established linguistic revelations but rather to look at the position of the vocalic phoneme in the 19th century and how the birth of comparative phonology, Helmholtz and the emergence of sound technology all begin to show a valuation of the vowel's role. |
