Editing Otto Jespersen (section)

===Influences and allegiances===
During the decades of his activity, Jespersen followed what other, younger linguists were doing but refrained from unreservedly welcoming any advance, let alone from aligning himself with any new approach. He remained individualistic, but "there was a conservative streak in his radicalism"{{efn|1="[I]l y avait dans son radicalisme un trait conservateur"}} as he seemed to take seriously only the standpoints that had influenced him in his youth and to interpret newer work as mere repetition of this or that older theory.{{sfnp|Hjelmslev|1943|p=129}}

Jespersen's main interest was not that of seeking patterns and explanations of the [[Langue and parole|''langue'' behind ''parole'']], but rather its opposite, the major concern of the phonetics and semantics of his youth: "the psychophysiological fact of ''parole''".{{efn|1="[La grande réalité] du fait psychophysiologique de la parole"}}{{sfnp|Hjelmslev|1943|p=129}}