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Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe
Abstract
Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing and the French Revolution. One theme is the relation between languages and communities and the place of language as a way of identifying others, as well as a symbol of one's own identity. A second, linked theme is that of competition: between Latin and the vernaculars, different vernaculars, dominant and subordinate, and different varieties of the same vernacular.
... Millar's actual conceptual focus is on the standardization of languages as a consequence of increasing literacy, but political implications are very much present in his depiction of the 'first hegemonies' of Greek and Latin, the 'centrifugal and centripetal forces' of late antiquity and the early medieval period, and the 'competing hegemonies' of the High Middle Ages. Importantly, Millar (2010) notes that pre-modernity is characterized by circumstantial (as opposed to planned) standardization: despite some writers exhibiting a desire to develop their language -Dante is the example mentioned by, for example, Peter Burke (2004), Sheldon Pollock (2006), and Millar (2010) -'no language committees and very few populist/popular movements existed' (Millar 2010, 16). This and many other points Millar makes are as relevant to vernacularization as they are to language standardization. ...
... A general correlation between the rise of vernacular languages in print and their increasing significance as national emblems makes sense, as book printing in local languages gradually limited Latin printing in Europe to specific genres in the early modern period, but there are grounds for nuancing the story by taking into account geographical differences and the varying intentions of historical actors. Burke (2004), who studies the relationships between communities and their languages in the early modern period, consciously avoids anachronistically nationalistic interpretations of the development of vernacular standard languages, but pinning the role of locally spoken vernaculars within the gradual emergence of the nation-state is challenging. Burke remarks, on the one hand, that although there may have been linguistic pride and xenophobia in Renaissance Europe during the development of vernacular writing, there was no linguistic nationalism before the French Revolution (2004,159). ...
Vernacularization is a term that many linguists, historians, anthropologists, and others have adopted to refer to changing linguistic, social, and cultural hierarchies within communities. While the phenomena described in these studies are certainly related, the actual meanings given to vernacularization vary so much as to include near opposites. In this article, we review the various uses of ‘vernacularization’ in the linguistic–historical context and delve into some of the more metaphorical usage of the term in neighbouring fields, discerning six interrelated strands of scholarly argumentation around vernacularization. We argue that increased awareness of the different characteristics assigned to vernacularization in these strands would improve its usefulness as an analytical concept across disciplines.
... This is an example of vernacularization, a process in which vernacular languages or language variants shift in status and usage in society. Vernacularization is typically linked to language standardization when vernacularslocal, mainly spoken languages with relatively low statusstart to be used in a written form for literary purposes (Pollock 2006;Burke 2004), although it can also signify a kind of destandardization when low-prestige forms of language gain acceptability in society (Coupland 2016). The process and its connections to societal conditions vary across time and spacethe relationship between Sanskrit and local languages in South Asia in the first and early second millennium or Latin and romance languages in late medieval and early modern period portray different dynamics than the creation of national languages in the nineteenth century or the revitalization of minority languages in the present. ...
This paper explores the development of Finnish into a standardized language of politics, science and culture in the nineteenth century. For contemporaries, this meant that Finnish could be regarded as a language that supported Finland as a state. We assumed that this expansion of the domains of use of written Finnish would have necessitated the development of more nuanced ways of expressing opinions and attitudes. We studied this by charting the overall frequency of modal expressions as well as the share of epistemic/evidential adverb types among modal adverbs. We found that the share of modal expressions increased in conjunction with the expansion of the Finnish-language press in the 1840s and again in the period after 1880. More importantly, we found that the amount of very frequently used epistemic/evidential adverb types increased in the mid-1800s, meaning that on average, Finnish newspaper writers had more means for nuanced expression in the latter half of the century.
... Language technologists use the phrase "natural languages" to distinguish languages that occur "naturally" in human societies, in contrast with "artificial languages" which include computer programming languages. Western technologists inherit a language ideology rooted in 19th-century European nationalism, during which languages had increasing associations with nation-states and emerging national identities [19,61,64]. Languages and dialects are assumed to have assigned and agreed names [57], with names frequently linked to administrative regions. ...
Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly increased in size and apparent capabilities in the last three years, but their training data is largely English text. There is growing interest in multilingual LLMs, and various efforts are striving for models to accommodate languages of communities outside of the Global North, which include many languages that have been historically underrepresented in digital realms. These languages have been coined as "low resource languages" or "long-tail languages", and LLMs performance on these languages is generally poor. While expanding the use of LLMs to more languages may bring many potential benefits, such as assisting cross-community communication and language preservation, great care must be taken to ensure that data collection on these languages is not extractive and that it does not reproduce exploitative practices of the past. Collecting data from languages spoken by previously colonized people, indigenous people, and non-Western languages raises many complex sociopolitical and ethical questions, e.g., around consent, cultural safety, and data sovereignty. Furthermore, linguistic complexity and cultural nuances are often lost in LLMs. This position paper builds on recent scholarship, and our own work, and outlines several relevant social, cultural, and ethical considerations and potential ways to mitigate them through qualitative research, community partnerships, and participatory design approaches. We provide twelve recommendations for consideration when collecting language data on underrepresented language communities outside of the Global North.
... Linguistic purism has been an institutional feature of systematic language planning and standardization since the founding of the Italian Accademia della Crusca in 1582 (Thomas 1991, page 102). Renaissance Humanists' rediscovery and remodeling of classical Latin's grammar and style in line with Ciceronian eloquence necessarily involved "purifying" Latin of the stylistic impediments and erroneous or inaccurate words and expressions amassed throughout the Medieval period (Burke 2004). From here, the very same template of lexical, grammatical and syntactical refinement was extended to the vernaculars of emerging European nation-states, providing the major languages of Western Europe (Italian, French, Spanish, English, Dutch, German, Portuguese, to name a few) with standardized written forms used for literary production and state administration (Patten 2006). ...
This paper examines the relation between linguistic purism, standardization, and vitality, arguing that linguistic purism warrants renewed emphasis as a necessary heuristic for preventing language endangerment and extinction. Linguistic purism has developed an unfavourable reputation in contemporary linguistics and is frequently portrayed as irrational and reactionary. This is partly due to its historical association with nationalism, and partly due to the descriptive rather than prescriptive nature of contemporary linguistics. This paper argues that linguistic purism is actually rooted in progressive rather than reactionary political thought and activity, and is a constitutive feature of Western Modernity. Moreover, its historical association with nationalism is more accurately understood as anti-colonial resistance, a grassroots version of which can be observed across numerous non-Han ethnic groups in the People’s Republic of China today. Using the explanatory framework of linguistic relativity, the paper further argues that purism is a rational rather than reactionary response to excessive translingual borrowing.
... There is reflection between both history and literature we all understand implicitly but nor concretely. According Burke (2004) history is part of literature, and literature is also an essential aspect of history or it can be said that both literature and history occur in numerous forms, from tax records and letters to full histories of whole nations and people. It is known that the legend of Banten; 'The Seven Wells' is considered literary work of fiction, yet at the same time it recognizes the fact that it represents a fragment of history that is still finds in Serang. ...
The objective of this study is to obtain appropriate learning materials of character education using Mapping Pivotal Table in Banten Literature. This research is a qualitative research through content analysis method. The data is taken from Banten Legend; “Legend of Kiai Gede”, “Nyai Bansari”, “The Seven Wells”, and key informant with expert. In analyzing the data, the researcher used character table by Bohlin’s theory (2013) that consist of moral starting point, 1st morally pivotal point, 2nd morally pivotal point, challenge point, and new change. The result of this research showed that Banten Legends contain moral educational values. The moral educational values are religious, hard worker, patriotism, never give up, responsibility, sincerity, caring other people and mutual respect (Solehat & Ramadan, 2021). The result found a close relationship between the stories with historical of Banten. “The seven Wells” are location in Serang-Banten and people believed that they brought God’s mercy for women life. And women who want to get married are advised to bathe in the water of the seven wells so that it brings blessings for a new life. The early time to be Pandeglang or the regency is known well as the place of religious men which found in the explanation of the legend of Kiai Gede. And Nyai Bansari showed Banten women are smart and brave who fight for the independence of their nation (Murhandono and Juwono 2014).
... Along with the cultural dominance of France, fear of Frenchification in various social and cultural fields spread across Europe. Many complaints can be found about the dominance of French manners, fashion, and books, and especially also about the importance of the French language (Frijhoff, 1989(Frijhoff, , 2015Burke, 2004;Beal, 2012). ...
There is a long history of social, cultural and political contact between the Dutch and French language areas, which has also resulted in language contact. In the Dutch language area, the cultural and linguistic contact situation has resulted in an anti-French discourse of alleged Frenchification from the sixteenth century onwards. The peak of influence from French is traditionally located in the eighteenth century. However, corpus-based research of the actual influence of French on Dutch in the Early and Late Modern periods is still scarce. We investigate the use of 31 French loan suffixes (e.g. the verbal suffix -eren, nominal suffixes such as -age and -teit, and adjectival suffixes such as -aal) in the Letters as Loot Corpus, which is a socially stratified corpus of private and business letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, written by men and women from various regions in the northern Low Countries. A regression analysis shows that the overall distribution of French loan suffixes is quite similar in the two periods, except for the capital Amsterdam, where there is a significant increase in the eighteenth century. Further significant effects are found for men and for the higher social ranks, and for business or mixed letters (as opposed to purely private letters). The results suggest that French-origin items entered the language of the northern Low Countries as relatively formal or conceptually written forms, mainly adopted by upper (middle) class men from the cosmopolitan city of Amsterdam.
Zusammenfassung
Übersetzungen sind ein omnipräsenter, aber oft unsichtbarer Teil des Alltags. Sie bereiten Informationen nicht nur sprachlich auf, sondern passen das zu Übersetzende an soziale Bedürfnisse und gesellschaftliche Gewohnheiten der Zielkultur an. Dabei werden soziale Hierarchisierungsprozesse neu ausgehandelt, bleiben jedoch hinter dem Übersetzungsstatus der Texte ebenso verborgen wie die Übersetzenden selbst. Eine geeignete Methode, verdeckte Machtverhältnisse in Übersetzungen offenzulegen, liefert die sozialwissenschaftliche Intersektionalitätstheorie. Die Herausgeberinnen verknüpfen diese mit kulturwissenschaftlicher Übersetzungsforschung und formulieren Leitfragen einer intersektionalen Übersetzungsanalyse. Sie laden dazu ein, frühneuzeitliche Übersetzungsliteratur aus intersektionalen Perspektiven zu untersuchen, und stellen die Beiträge des Sammelbandes vor, die diese Kombination von Translationswissenschaft und Intersektionalitätsforschung interdisziplinär erproben und evaluieren.
Translations are an omnipresent and often invisible part of everyday life. Translators not only process information linguistically, but also adapt the source texts to the social needs and societal habits of the target culture. In the process, they renegotiate social hierarchization processes which, however, remain as unseen behind the texts’ translated status as the translators themselves. The socio-scientific intersectionality theory offers a suitable method of revealing hidden power structures. In their introduction, the editors link that method with cultural translation studies and formulate key aspects of intersectional translation analysis. Inviting readers to examine Early Modern translation literature from intersectional perspectives, they provide an overview of the volume’s contributions, which test and evaluate the application of intersectionality research to translation studies.
This research paper addresses the complex interplay between multilingualism and the pervasive dominance of the English language in academic publishing, particularly focusing on Arabic academic publications in the humanities. This study adopts a comprehensive research methodology, employing both qualitative and quantitative analyses to investigate Arabic research representation in English-dominated academic journals, particularly those indexed in Scopus across various humanities disciplines such as Language and Linguistics, Literature, Islamic Studies, and Translation. The analysis utilizes bibliometric data from Scopus, focusing on publications from 1970 to 2023 that feature “Arabic,” “Arab,” or “Islamic” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. The results indicate a significant underrepresentation of Arabic scholarship, with English accounting for 85% of publications and Arabic barely reaching 1.1%. The discrepancies in publication trends are obvious, on the levels of countries, author affiliations as well as language of publication. Overall, the results highlight the hegemonic nature of academic publishing, the marginalization of valuable Arabic research and the challenges Arabic-speaking scholars face in gaining recognition. Finally, the study addresses the broader implications of linguistic dominance on global knowledge production and advocates for a more inclusive scholarly landscape that values linguistic diversity through specific recommendations.
This study investigates the diverse Maybachufer Market in Berlin using an ethnographic Linguistic Landscape (LL) analysis that integrates quantitative and qualitative approaches. The paper focuses on the complex interplay between social dynamics at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels and language use in this multilingual and multiethnic urban space. The market signs mirror social and spatial settings and relevant language attitudes. The linguistic choices are shaped by and oriented towards (1) national language ideologies despite the multilingual and multiethnic environment; (2) dominant market languages; and (3) commercial gain, targeting specific customers and enhancing marketing strategies. By focusing on language attitudes and language use on market signs, this paper provides insights into the semiotic relevance of signs, societal language ideologies, and local communicative practices in multiethnic urban settings, contributing to the broader discourse on societal multilingualism and the benefits of ethnographic LL analyses in capturing the essence of diverse urban spaces.
Worlds of Byzantium offers a new understanding of what it means to study the history and visual culture of the Byzantine empire during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Arguing that linguistic and cultural frontiers do not always coincide with political ones, it suggests that Byzantine studies should look not only within but also beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and include the history of Christian populations in the Muslim-ruled Middle East and neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Armenia and integrate more closely with Judaic and Islamic studies. With essays by leading scholars in a wide range of fields, it offers a vision of a richly interconnected eastern Mediterranean and Near East that will be of interest to anyone who studies the premodern world.
The Manual section of the Handbook of Pragmatics, produced under the auspices of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), is a collection of articles describing traditions, methods, and notational systems relevant to the field of linguistic pragmatics; the main body of the Handbook contains all topical articles. The first edition of the Manual was published in 1995. This second edition includes a large number of new traditions and methods articles from the 24 annual installments of the Handbook that have been published so far. It also includes revised versions of some of the entries in the first edition. In addition, a cumulative index provides cross-references to related topical entries in the annual installments of the Handbook and the Handbook of Pragmatics Online (at https://benjamins.com/online/hop/), which continues to be updated and expanded. This second edition of the Manual is intended to facilitate access to the most comprehensive resource available today for any scholar interested in pragmatics as defined by the International Pragmatics Association: “the science of language use, in its widest interdisciplinary sense as a functional (i.e. cognitive, social, and cultural) perspective on language and communication.”
Szwecja należała w XVII wieku do europejskich mocarstw. Królestwo to starało się podbudować ideologicznie swoją wysoką międzynarodową pozycję. Jednym z elementów tej wielkomocarstwowej ideologii było odwołanie się do znanego greckiego mitu o Hyperborejczykach. Miało ono de facto dwa cele: 1) wskazanie na wysoki poziom etyczno-moralny Szwedów jako potomków Hyperborejczyków oraz 2) zakwestionowanie kulturowej hegemonii starożytnych Greków, którzy sami uważali Hyperborejczyków za społeczeństwo o wzorowej strukturze etyczno-moralnej. Szwedzcy erudyci (m.in. Georg Stiernhielm, Olaus Verelius, Olaf Rubeck Starszy) starali się także dowieść z pomocą hyperborejskiej legendy, że Szwedzi, potomkowie Gotów, to najstarszy naród Europy, a język gocki to pierwotny język ludzkości. W konsekwencji Grecy mieli postrzegać kulturę Gotów i Szwedów, których nazywali Hyperborejczykami, jako niedościgły wzór do naśladowania. Naśladownictwo ma jednak zawsze charakter wtórny, a taki miał mieć właśnie dorobek intelektualny starożytnych Greków. Zatem to nie oni, lecz Goci i Szwedzi zbudowali fundamenty cywilizacji europejskiej i to im należy się pierwsze miejsce w hierarchii narodów Europy.
The article is dedicated to the analysis of the linguistic-textual representation of Salvatore in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose and its Slovene, Croatian, Czech and Polish translations. The first part of the article deals with different linguistic and intertextual layers composing Salvatore’s original utterances, while the second part is devoted to Salvatore’s translated language, concentrating – primarily – on his heteroglossia and intertextuality. Salvatore is a grotesque plurilinguistic and intertextual character born out of the rich erudite immagination of Umberto Eco. The four translated Salvatores appear also as strange babelic monks whose multilingualism expands by adding a dominant Slavic linguistic element to the source-text heteroglossia. The intertextual dimension of translated Salvatores, on one hand, diminishes as most source-text citations blend into the translated linguistic mosaic, but, on the other hand, it also increases by gaining an additional metatextual (translational) dimension and, equally important, by incorporating a substantial part of Eco’s original text.
The paper considers historical lingua francas and standard language ideology from the framework of ‘language history from below’. Although some work has been devoted to mixed forms of language in studies of standardisation, little attention has been paid to lingua francas. This paper focusses on a historical dictionary – the Dictionnaire de la langue franque of 1830 – to argue that historical data can be considered as evidence ‘from below’ for the broader ideologies of standardisation which were circulating in early modern Europe. I argue that the fictive dialogues contained in the Dictionnaire are a projection that reflect broader theories about language standardisation at the time. In this sense, the paper argues for further development of the role of lingua francas in models of standardisation more generally.
This thematic issue of Linguistica explores the interaction between sociocultural change and the development of vernacular languages in Early Modern Europe. Its scope is deliberately broad in the range of topics, languages as well as in the time span covered from, at one end, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period in the 15th century to, at the other end, the transition from the Early Modern to the Late Modern period in the 18th and 19th centuries. The leitmotiv of the issue – the development of vernacular languages – is explored from different perspectives, for different languages and at different periods. The languages covered include not only languages which were official or hegemonic in emerging European nation states – English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch – but also peripheral languages such as Slovene, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Low German, Catalan and Franco-Provençal. Several of the articles in this issue also focus on more than one vernacular language, exploring competition or contact between Latin and vernacular languages or between different vernacular languages and cultures.
This study focuses on the work Los col·loquis de la insigne ciutat de Tortosa [Dialogues. A Catalan Renaissance Colloquy Set in the City of Tortosa] by the Catalan knight Cristòfol Despuig. While it was written around 1557, it was not published until 1877. My analysis demonstrates that the issue of language is raised in the Dialogues to defend the memory of the Catalan-Aragonese Empire in which the Principality of Catalonia has always been the dominant part, especially in the Catalan-speaking lands. The prestigious position of the Principality of Catalonia is supported by an explicit hierarchy of the varieties of the Catalan language in which the Catalan used in the Principality of Catalonia is considered superior. This explicit hierarchy implies two important ideological aspects: first, the idea of origin as the main criterion to value the different varieties of the language. Second, the description of the Valencian other as a palimpsest, since while Valencians were colonized first by Catalans and then by Castilians, the Catalan colonial presence can still be recovered. The otherness of the Valencian identity is represented by four linguistic aspects of the text: first, the Castilian name of the Valencian character: don Pedro. Second, don Pedro’s lack of awareness that Catalan was a courtly language. Third, don Pedro’s acknowledgement that the Catalan spoken in the Kingdom of Valencia has been contaminated by its contact with Castilian. Finally, the erasure of the literary achievements in Catalan in the Kingdom of Valencia during the reign of the Castilian Trastámara Dynasty in the Crown of Aragon (1412–1516). This erasure supports the superiority of the House of Barcelona-Aragon over the Trastámara Dynasty. Moreover, it supports a clear association between language and political power in which literature does not play an important role in the value of a language.
In this paper, based on several types of documents (legal texts, diplomatic correspondence, literary writings, educational works), I examine how factors external to the language, of various kinds, acting in a complex synergy, had an impact on the geographical development and functional diffusion of the idioms present in the ancient States of Savoy at a time when the vernacular languages were asserting themselves and consolidating. In particular, I focus on the ‘French’ side of the Duchy to show that in these territories the predominance of French in most communicative contexts and the confinement of Franco-Provençal to the sphere of family life and everyday activities depend on political decisions but also on the geographical context and the social and economic fabric: French is the prerogative of the highest classes, who use it carefully and rigorously, distancing themselves not only from Latin tradition but also from regional or dialectal popular culture, while Franco-Provençal remains the prerogative of the most isolated communities and those with more difficulty in accessing education. This divide is visible, on a literary level, by two distinct parallel traditions.
At the transition from medieval to early modern Europe, vernaculars became more commonly used in writing in various domain, including administration and law. In the late Middle Ages, vernaculars seem to gain status and start to be regarded as suitable languages for recording municipal matters. But how did this vernacularisation progress in such documentary legal texts? When and why was Latin replaced by vernaculars? To answer these questions, this article presents diachronic quantitative analyses of the language choice in individual entries of two documentary legal sources: the first eight volumes of the Aberdeen Council Registers (1398–1511) and one volume of the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch (1430–1451). The comparative approach to these multilingual texts allows us to trace vernacularisation processes across two language contexts, uncovering similarities and differences between them. In the council registers from Aberdeen, Scots replaced Latin slowly and gradually – a process that took over a century and was far from finished by 1511. In the text from Lübeck, on the other hand, the shift from Latin to Low German was largely completed within about 30 years. In both cases, language practices of the scribes rather than top-down language policies seem to have driven this development. The scribes’ language choices will have been influenced by the use of vernaculars in other texts, including those in the domain of law, pragmatic considerations, and more general socioeconomic developments. By investigating vernacularisation processes in two sources, this article offers a first comparative account that allows for generalisations beyond individual language contexts and serves as the basis for further research in this area.
This paper delves into language differentiation in the 16th and 17th-century Low Countries, focusing on how vernacular languages were labeled and framed in grammatical descriptions. We examine both monolingual grammars as well as grammatical descriptions in multilingual textbooks for foreign language learners. By comparing these two corpora, we gain insights into the differences between monolingual and multilingual approaches to language differentiation and uncover language ideologies that shaped the Language-Making process during this early stage of standard languages. An example of language differentiation is the evolving relation between ‘Dutch’ and ‘German’. In the monolingual grammars, Dutch is explicitly positioned along the lines of an ‘ours’ versus a ‘theirs’, but what is considered ‘ours’ differs between the grammars and changes over time. In the multilingual textbooks, the direct juxtaposition between Dutch and German on the title page leads to distinct labels (‘Nederduits’ vs. ‘Hoogduits’) whereas there is no consistent distinction in the body of these textbooks until the late 17th century. Overall, we conclude that a ‘Dutch language’ was certainly being ‘made’ during this period, in name and in reference to other vernacular languages. However, its boundaries were still fuzzy, reflecting the multilingual reality of the early modern Low Countries.
This paper studies on multilingual administrative writing in Sweden during the early modern era of emerging national language ideology within the domain of court writing. The source material for this study consists of lower-court records from Finnish-speaking areas of the Swedish realm c. 1620–1700. The court system in Sweden was reformed in 1614 with the establishment of appellate courts that scrutinized the sentences passed by lower courts. Court records were written in Swedish, the official language of administrative writing of the period, but certain segments, notably represented speech, could be rendered in Finnish. This required textual mediation between the prescribed Swedish language of the court protocol, and the non-standard spoken Finnish in the courtrooms. The aim is to examine the embedding strategies, retention patterns, and textual mediation in the multilingual writing of 17th-century Finnish court scribes. The results show that Finnish is retained for especially pertinent or untranslatable witness statements. At the end of the 17th century, the use of parallel Swedish translations and clarifications to Finnish items increased. It is argued that this increase is due to the imposition of autocracy in 1680 and a concomitant push towards monolingual Swedish uniformity within the entire realm.
The Englishman Roger Ascham (c.1515–68) was an expert Latinist and Hellenist, and an inveterate code-switcher. This article will assess Ascham’s careful incorporation of Greek into his writing, be it single words, phrases or quotations. It will consider his extensive Latin correspondence and theological treatises that were inflected with Greek; his Latin and Greek poetry; and also one of his most famous tracts composed in the vernacular. I will explore how his use of Greek heightened a sense of sociability at both micro- and macro-levels through the establishment of a network of ‘belonging’. Ascham’s conspicuous cultivation of royalty and nobles also implicated his Greek code-switches in the business of State governance. Yet many of Ascham’s Greek references were religiously freighted through his frequent engagement with the Greek New Testament; this was especially true of his two theological Latin tracts, each of which broached sensitive doctrinal topics and used Greek as a guarantor of religious veracity. In addition to probing the meanings of discrete parcels of Greek, this article will also broach the significant role Greek might play in terms of linguistic enhancement, both for Latin and also the vernacular. Taking this further, I will additionally suggest that Greek could be instrumental in effecting a broader programme of moral formation. Hence a fundamental premise and arrival-point of this paper is that code-switching was more than just a practice; it was a mentality.
During the eighteenth century, more women than before succeeded in finding a voice of their own and in exercising intellectual or literary authority. Letters proved an ideal environment for them to explore, shape and justify their intellectual and authorial self. Women’s letters gave, moreover, clear evidence of their interest in multilingualism, because early modern women found themselves at the crossroads of languages due to their active participation in transcultural intellectual networks and their contribution to cultural transfers. In this essay we examine to what extent multilingualism served a strategic purpose in the letters of eighteenth-century women writers: how did multilingualism inform their intellectual and authorial identity formation and representation? To that end, we will explore the dynamic interplay between language, gender and intellectual authority, in the letters of Isabelle de Charrière (1740–1805), a Dutch and Swiss woman writer who was raised and educated in the so-called lingua franca of the Republic of Letters. Our analysis sheds new light upon the way in which Enlightenment women writers, such as Charrière, actively (re)shaped their intellectual and authorial identity. It also contributes a fresh perspective to the growing scholarly interest in the transcultural and multilingual dimensions of early modern women’s lives and works.
Esta investigación explica os alicerces da proposta dialectolóxica para o concello de Castrelo do Val e para iso empregáronse como métodos de indagación enquisas e gravacións. Tamén pretende esbozar unha proposta dialectolóxica do conxunto do galego tendo en conta o cambio lingüístico de longa duración. No concello de Castrelo do Val, onde cada lugar ten unha fala diferente, producíronse catro converxencias lingüísticas como resultado da historia, da xeografía e da veciñanza. Isto extrapólase para o resto do galego e sostense que o galego sen seseo explosivo é o galego común (entendido como aquel que ocupa unha área maior), o cal tende a coincidir co galego do bloque central de Fernández Rei. Agora ben, a falta dun estado propio e do seu aparato centralizador fixo que haxa casos de converxencias lingüísticas que só acadan algunhas zonas galegas sen chegar a constituír unha verdadeira koiné galega (aira), a cal é distinta da variante estándar. O galego da comarca de Verín converxe en moitos casos co galego común pero tamén presenta elementos orientalizantes (cantais, tu, alustro, fraga, muito), que tamén son meridionalizantes por teren continuidade no portugués lindante.
English has changed considerably over the course of its 1500-year history. In this chapter, we get an overview of what the language looked like in four major periods in this history: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Late Modern English. By comparing these periods, the chapter highlights some of the most important changes in the language—in lexicon, phonology, and morphosyntax—and sketches the socio-historical context in which they took place. There are no explanations yet: these will follow in subsequent chapters. The chapter closes with an overview of some easily available sources to investigate language change in the history of English.
The controversy of the medium of instruction in Pakistan is old and its roots date back to the pre-Independence Colonial period. Pakistan inherited an educational structure from the British Empire which was later largely modified but its certain essential features are in place to date. The banishment of Urduand, in its stead, the inclusion of English as a medium of instruction is one such feature which, in its own right, is a well-recognized colonial relic. The use of English as a medium of instruction in Pakistan has its defenders as well as detractors. However, what is crucially missing in this debate, is the expert opinion and the evidence-based technical and dispassionate analysis of the problem at hand. A large number of the people who usually participate in this debate tend to come up with unsubstantiated claims and opinion-based generalizations. This paper intends to make a well substantiated appraisal of the loss and gain of the medium of instruction, andexamines the relevance and value of the first language (in our case, Urdu)in the context of the medium of instruction. Finally, the paper expects to bring about an informed understanding of the process, context, objectives, and outcomes of the medium of instruction from the perspective of language pedagogy and planning.
This article offers a rationale for research and engagement on conceptions of ‘community’ in the twenty-first century in the context of changing conceptions of relationality through the impact of secularisation, social media, and online gaming. It highlights the growing concerns and healthcare outcomes of isolation in the context of shifting perceptions of ‘community’ as the basis for a re-examination of the value of ‘covenant’ as ‘communities of purpose’ in our interdependent world. In so doing, it proposes that covenant communities offer a route through which fundamental relationalities which engender belonging, security, and personal value can be restored at local, national or even trans-national levels.
We often hear that our world 'is more multilingual than ever before', but is it true? This book shatters that cliché. It is the first volume to shine light on the millennia-long history of multilingualism as a social, institutional and demographic phenomenon. Its fifteen chapters, written in clear, accessible language by prominent historians, classicists, and sociolinguists, span the period from the third century BC to the present day, and range from ancient Rome and Egypt to medieval London and Jerusalem, from Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires to modern Norway, Ukraine, and Spain. Going against the grain of traditional language histories, these thought-provoking case studies challenge stereotypical beliefs, foreground historic normativity of institutional multilingualism and language mixing, examine the transformation of polyglot societies into monolingual ones, and bring out the cognitive and affective dissonance in present-day orientations to multilingualism, where 'celebrations of linguistic diversity' coexist uneasily with creation of 'language police'.
We often hear that our world 'is more multilingual than ever before', but is it true? This book shatters that cliché. It is the first volume to shine light on the millennia-long history of multilingualism as a social, institutional and demographic phenomenon. Its fifteen chapters, written in clear, accessible language by prominent historians, classicists, and sociolinguists, span the period from the third century BC to the present day, and range from ancient Rome and Egypt to medieval London and Jerusalem, from Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires to modern Norway, Ukraine, and Spain. Going against the grain of traditional language histories, these thought-provoking case studies challenge stereotypical beliefs, foreground historic normativity of institutional multilingualism and language mixing, examine the transformation of polyglot societies into monolingual ones, and bring out the cognitive and affective dissonance in present-day orientations to multilingualism, where 'celebrations of linguistic diversity' coexist uneasily with creation of 'language police'.
Un dialogue des savoirs : telle est l'ambition de cet ouvrage qui vise à faire échanger histoire des sciences et histoire des techniques. Deux historiographies qui, pour être complémentaires, n'ont pas pour autant toujours été associées. Les techniques ont été, en effet, longtemps perçues comme des « sciences appliquées ». Or il s'agit plutôt de décrypter comment, à quels moments, dans quels contextes sociaux, elles ont pu être envisagées comme subordonnées aux sciences. Pour quelles raisons, par exemple, les techniciens sont-ils « invisibles » aux yeux des savants dans l'Angleterre du XVIIe siècle ? Ce dialogue mérite d'être étudié depuis les contextes européens, du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, quand les sciences « modernes », en particulier « expérimentales », s'affirment dans une interaction constante avec les techniques. Des lieux de savoir hybrides, intermédiaires, des « trading zones », permettent ce contact fructueux entre savants et praticiens, depuis les laboratoires et les collections jusqu'aux ateliers, aux mines, aux arsenaux ou aux navires mêmes. Dans ces lieux, la dichotomie entre technique et science, pratique et théorie, s'efface, invitant à considérer, dans un mouvement conjoint, la science comme produit de la matérialité et les techniques comme relevant de l'intellection. L'approche des savoirs scientifiques et techniques privilégiée ici est sociale, culturelle et politique. Les auteurs insistent sur l'insertion des savoirs dans les sociétés et les interactions entre savoirs et pouvoirs. Comment la construction et la diffusion des savoirs ont transformé l'approche du monde et de la nature, la conception même du temps et de l'espace, dans l'Europe moderne ? Des villes de la péninsule italienne à la Renaissance aux expéditions scientifiques menées par l'Académie royale des sciences ou la Royal Society durant les Lumières, la transformation territoriale, politique et sociale de l'Europe s'est effectuée autant par la maîtrise de savoir-faire techniques que par le biais d'investigations savantes qui ont façonné les contours de la dite « modernité » européenne.
The paper discusses Internet resources concerning written Polish documents from the 16th century, concentrating mainly on the Dictionary of the 16th-Century Polish Language (www.spxvi.edu.pl), which includes both a text database, a dictionary and a language corpus. All these resources provide information on the history of the Jagiellon dynasty, both directly, through royal correspondence, legal documents and chronicles, and indirectly, through dedications and literary works. The article also presents the connections between these resources and other Internet resources used for historical and linguistic research in Poland. Thanks to digital humanities, they are now easily accessible from anywhere in the world and may serve as an important tool for thorough studies of the past.
The term intralingual translation (IntraTr) implies translation within the same language (e.g. Jakobson 1959). However, historico-linguistic and sociolinguistic complexity does not allow the term “language” to be clearly defined. It can be understood, for example, as a broad, rather historically defined diachronic “system”, as an abstract synchronic language system at the level of langue, or as any concrete (autonomous or heteronomous) linguistic variety at the level of parole. If one adds to this the problem of the term “translating”, where one can start from a narrow definition on the one hand and a broad definition on the other, one notes that IntraTr can have a very wide field of application.1 Methodologically and definitionally, however, there is a problem in that two completely different translation processes, such as (1) the “translation” of a functional variety (technical text) into the standard language, and (2) the translation of an older language stage (e.g. from antiquity or the Middle Ages) into the contemporary language, can be equally defined as intralingual translations.
Research on language standardization witnessed remarkable progress over the past two decades. Building on the strong foundations laid by Einar Haugen, the scholarly canon on the topic was renewed, while also addressing a number of shortcomings of earlier theory building. As historical sociolinguistics gained momentum, standardization history faced the challenge of including ‘voices from below’ as they appeared in new and socially inclusive corpora of egodocuments from the past centuries. This implied an increased focus on the formerly overlooked role and presence of non-standard varieties, but also on the ideological driving factors behind many standardization efforts. The article makes a case for specific and ongoing attention to the implementation phase of standardization measures, as well as for the study of language conflicts from times past to help prevent imminent geopolitical struggles (or, for worse, to inform our understanding of these conflicts in the near future).
This paper is a case study of Enlightenment’s cadastral landscape recording exemplified by the General Land Survey, taken by the Russian Empire in the newly acquired region of Latgale (contemporary eastern Latvia) in 1784–1785. The surveyors scrupulously described and showed on maps many natural features, such as trees, animals, birds, and fish species, as well as provided insight into social realities by mentioning inhabitants, settlements, local place-names, religious and ethnic relations. However, it was by no means a pure reflection of Latgale’s natural and cultural landscape. The paper argues that the survey in Latgale simultaneously registered the resources, regulated property boundaries, strengthened landlords’ control over peasants, and imposed the rule of the new state. Similarly, as western and central European states, Russia needed a detailed description of the province in order to control it. It was a fundamental change for Latgale, previously belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that had not introduced any cadastre or comparable land survey, therefore performed little control at a local level.
Societal multilingualism is an essential aspect of political communication. This applies in particular to the management of security issues and language conflicts in multilingual states. As this article demonstrates, these processes of securitization set in much earlier than just in situations of open conflict. They can lead to a spiral of competitive securitization. It is therefore surprising that so far hardly any theoretical considerations have been made to explore the intersection between conflict dynamics, securitization processes and multilingualism. This article therefore examines this theoretical gap and identifies questions and requirements for future theoretical work. The aim is to open new avenues for studying multilingualism through the prism of securitization and conflict theory.
This article responds to the current interventions regarding spatio- and linguistic diversity in the digital humanities (DHs). Previous work has focused on the practitioners of DHs themselves, the diversity of projects, the geographical diversity of peoples and places which such projects represent, and others. Some literature has considered multilingual DH, whether a non-Anglophone DH is possible, or a DH ‘accent’. This article pushes these boundaries further by considering forms of historical linguistic hybridity for languages, language varieties, and groups of people that are no longer extant. It considers one text in particular, the Dictionnaire de la langue franque, to show that, although ‘mixed’ languages are the norm in all societies, forms of hybridity are often left by the wayside in favour of increasing heterogeneity. This observation, in turn, leads to a taxonomy of definitional elusiveness.
In this article I offer an extended socio-historical overview of the Portuguese language in Brazil from independence to modern times in order to establish why there is such a gulf between the written official standard and actual linguistic usage. I reflect on how language is often regarded as a problem within educational contexts and how the response of academics in both linguistics and education studies has largely been focused on combating linguistic prejudice against non-standard varieties of Portuguese. I identify this as a recognition-oriented strategy aimed at changing attitudes towards non-standard forms of the language and its speakers and I question the effectiveness of such strategies. I argue that there are more fundamental structural problems with language and education in Brazil. These are identified as (a) the linguistic distance between the speech of the great majority of Brazilians and the official standard norm and (b) the uncertainty whether the education system is designed to teach this standard norm or, paradoxically, to assess the extent to which it is acquired. I conclude with an analysis of modern education policy documents where I find no strong emphasis for ensuring that students achieve active, advanced proficiency in the standard norm. I argue that recognition-orientated strategies need to be accompanied by strategies that advocate for structural changes in (a) the standard language to make it more readily resemble the actual speech of Brazilians and (b) how this standard is used as a means of instruction and assessment. Para a versão em português clique no botão de download à direita.
The fame of Abraham Vander-Mylius (Abraham van der Myl, 1563-1637) as a linguist persisted through many generations. The Lingua Belgica of the Dutch theologian, which appeared at Leiden in 1612, had a clarity, freshness, and persuasiveness which were vital factors in establishing its reputation. Even today, the work has value as revealing, both explicitly and implicitly, views on language that were current in the author's time. This article is particularly concerned with the attitude which Mylius displayed toward the historical, diachronic aspects of language. The primary aim is to present as clearly as possible Mylius' own views on this phase of language; only incidentally are we concerned with his sources.
Since the beginning of the nineteenth century language has come to occupy a prominent place, often a provocative and intolerant one, in the ideology and rhetoric of nations. ‘Every people ( Volk )’, so Herder asserted, ‘has its own language as it has its own culture ( Bildung ).’ Bishop Stubbs spoke with equal certainty, if only to vindicate the Germanic character of the English people and to clear it of the charge of being infected with Roman or Celtic traits. Language, he pronounced roundly, is ‘the nearest approach to a perfect test of national extraction’. It is a sentiment whose certainty and content would command almost no historical support today. We are much more likely to agree with Eric Hobsbawm's opinion that ‘language was merely one, and not necessarily the primary, way of distinguishing between cultural communities’.