Abstract

In this article are treated, in general strokes, the methodological foundations of the Diccionario de conceptos políticos y sociales de la España de los siglos XIX y XXwhich has been published recently under the direction of the above mentioned editors. This dictionary in which nearly 200 authors of different Spanish universitiesand centres of research have collaborated collects more than 100 articles. It is partly inspired by the German Begriffsgeschichte. Its editors, however, have also taken into account the contribution of the famous school of Cambridge by adapting the influences of several methodological currents to the specific claims of their work, i. e. to the elaboration of a dictionary which, on the basis of a huge volume of sources, pretends to cartograph, in an alphabetical order, the principal ideological lines – the discoursive and conceptual ones – of the Spanish 19th century. The article ends with a discussion of certain difficulties and aspects which are treated controversally in the intellectual history. It also claims to give a reflexion on the suitability and meaning which can – in the actual situation of the social sciences – pretend to determine the studies of political languages, especially the basic essays concerning the comparative history of political and social thinking under a conceptual perspective.