The London School.

Henry Sweet

The Phonetic study in the modern sense was pioneered by Henry Sweet.

Sweet was the greatest of the few historical linguists whom Britain produced in the ninetteth century to rival the burgeoning of historical linguistics in Germany, but, inlike the German scholars, Sweet based his studies on the workings of the vocal organs.

Daniel Jones

Sweet's general approach to phonetics was continued by Daniel Jones, who took the subject up as hobby, suggested to the authorities of University College,London, that they ough to consider teaching phonetics of French. was taken on as a lecturer there in 1907 and built up what became the first university department of phonetics in Britain.

Jones stressed the importance of language study through training in the practical skills of perceiving, transcribing and reproducing minute distictiond of speech-sound.

He invented the system of cardinal reference-points which made precise and consistent transcription possible in the case of vowels.

John Rupert Firth

John Rupert Firth turned linguistics proper into a recognized distinct academic subject in Britain.
He was Professor of English at the University of the Punjab from 1919-1928. He then worked in the phonetics department of University College London before moving to the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he became Professor of General Linguistics, a position he held until his retirement in 1956.

Bronisław Malinowski

Bronisław Kasper Malinowski was Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics from 1927 onwards.
The most important aspect in Malinowski's theorizing, as distinct from his purely ethnographic work, concerned the functioning of language.
For Malinowski to think of language as a ¨means of transfusing ideas from the head of the speaker to that of the listener¨was a misleading myth.