Vēstures (terminoloģiskais) diskurss un dažu pamatterminu vēsture latviešu valodā

The historical metadiscourse – the description of the history of the science of history itself – occupies a special place in the discourse of history. Historiography is impossible without a focus on what terms were used in the writing of history, since the terms chosen by historians reveal the level of conceptualisation of past research. The aim of this paper is to clarify how and why the terminology of historical science was created in the Latvian language, which are the main lexicographic sources of history terms and how the terminological course on history terms developed in Latvia, as well as to outline the history of the use of some key history terms. A significant aim of the study is to provide a definition of the concept of history terms. The origins of historical discourse in Latvian texts can be traced back to the second half of the eighteenth century; the initial efforts to collect Latvian history terms in the context of historical discourse date back to the nineteenth century. An insight into the history of the use of several key history terms illustrates a long and complex terminological process, with apparent interference from other languages, e. g. in the form of calques, as well as unstable, incoherent and often parallel use of varying orthography, word forms and formal lexical variants.