Notes on a Debate and its Censures. The paper reviews a historiographical debate around the “linguistic turn”, which divides the community of anglo-saxon historians. It analyses the arguments put forward by its partisans and detractors in the specific space of the British journal Social History, which since 1992 has welcomed regular, sometimes even violent exchanges. It specifies the different positions, showing how under the label of “linguistic turn” very often differentiated positions are unduly mixed ; it indicates who are the inspirers of historians beyond the Atlantic claiming kinship with this “linguistic turn”, and the outcome of their analyses. The question in such a case is to interpret the reasons for some important “censures” in a debate which aspires to re-discuss methods, finalities and objectives of the work of the historian, particularly the absence of all reflection on sources and the contexts of analysis (which renders it less exotic in relationship to French historiographical discussions). Finally, the paper seeks to account for the unusual violence of the style of oppositions, which refers to the problems of E. P. Thompson’s cultural heritage.