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New Chaucer Society 2018 University of Toronto
Bilingualism and Social Snobbery in Medieval England
Jonathan Fruoco
According to the latest estimates, there would be around 7 000 languages, and thousands of
dialectical variations, spoken in the 197 countries recognized by the U.N. There are, as a
result, many plurilingual spaces around the globe, whether it is in a country using only one
national language or in others in which plurilingualism has been institutionalized: Switzerland
possesses, for instance, four national languages, Belgium has three, and Canada, two.
This dynamic is however far from being specific to the modern world, though and is
especially relevant in the case of medieval England. For language has a unique capacity to
reflect a profound social and political transformation. The Norman invasion in 1066
represented a massive language shift and cultural revolution in Anglo-Saxon England, which
would lead to the co-existence of French and English – medieval England was, of course, a
plurilingual space but we will mainly focus on French-English bilingualism today.
As we will see, the gradual “Frenchification” of the English language was not so much the
result of a linguicide, as it was suggested in the past, but rather of a linguistic suicide
motivated by social snobbery.
In a situation of advanced language contact, a distinction is usually made between two
different linguistic changes with, on the one hand, fast-acting transformations that mainly
modify the lexicon and the spelling and, on the other, long-term changes that focus on syntax,
and morphology. William’s takeover was particularly violent, and interestingly enough, this
idea of order and violence was reflected in the first stage of the Old English lexical
transformation. The Peterborough Chronicles thus gives us a general idea of what sort of
words was then borrowed: except for new ranks (cuntesse, duc), we find concepts such as
doing iustice (to hang someone), castel, prisun or crucethur (a torture device) (Barber 166).
These first loan words show, once more, the capacity of language to reflect a profound social
and political transformation, and as Tom Shippey noticed, “[m]uch of this vocabulary looks
like the words inmates of a concentration camp might learn from the guards” (2). But while
contact with Old Norse helped Old English simplify through the loss of some of its
inflections, French influenced English at a different level. Indeed, the Norman political shift
was followed by such a massive transformation of the Old English lexicon that together with
the already engaged process of morphological synthesis, the language evolved into a new
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variety considered by linguists as a different idiom. In their Manuel de l’anglais du Moyen-
Âge, Fernand Mossé and André Jolivet explained:
Following the transfer of the political center from Winchester to London, it is the
Mercian dialect that became, after the Norman Conquest, the base of the common
language and the source of Modern English. Although Alfred and Ælfric’s language is
quite close to Chaucer and Shakespeare’s language, it is not exactly its ancestor.
(Mossé and Jolivet 1. 21).
In the decades following the Norman Conquest, Old English began to evolve – or rather
mutate – at an extraordinary speed, losing in that process much of its most distinctive
characteristics. Nonetheless, even though inflections were gradually leveled, we cannot
consider the Normans or the Vikings as being responsible for this morphological synthesis.
Both Hastings and the Danelaw might be considered merely as accelerative factors of a
natural phenomenon. This simplification of language is indeed very similar to what Dick
Leith compared to a “gradual erosion” (100).
The contact between French and English did not produce, as one might have expected, a
large-scale pidginization since the invaders were simply too few in numbers. Between 50 000
and 60 000 Normans settled in an England then inhabited by a million and a half people,
leading to bilingualism, and actually to be more precise, to a reinforced plurilingualism
(Crépin 30). England was still, as a result, a plurilingual society, even during the fourteenth
century, and “[b]y Chaucer's time it is probable that almost everyone born in England, with
the exception of some of those on the Celtic marches of Wales and Cornwall, grew up with
English as their main and native language” (Shippey 1). But even though English had become
the main language used by most of the population, its essence was still marked by the contact
with other cultures.
The Norman Invasion had thus left deep marks in the English linguistic background,
especially in the upper reaches of society, where social rank and fluency in French were still
strongly correlated. Although a situation of coexisting monoglots certainly lasted for some
time once William the Conqueror was crowned, it gradually disappeared, leaving in its wake a
much more enduring sense of linguistic stratification: French outranked English, yes, but
Latin being the language of the Church, outranked French. “And on the Celtic marches
English was allowed to outrank Welsh, and with many local adjustments Cornish, Irish and
Scots Gaelic too” (Shippey 1).
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A brief detour by Thomas Cantilupe’s beatification commission, which was held in 1320 in
Hereford, near the Welsh border, will help us to better visualize how marked England’s
plurilingualism was and how the English people reacted to the situation.
Latin French French/Latin Welsh English Total
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
0
21
10
1
100
132
16 12
3
0 0
31
Commoners
Clerics
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Michael Richter notes that the detailed records of Cantilupe’s beatification commission
show that one hundred and sixty-three witnesses were questioned, most of whom tried to
speak in the most prestigious language they knew. The table presented here gives us a unique
glimpse at the linguistic hierarchy in medieval England: among the thirty-one clerics, none
spoke English or Welsh, sixteen used pure Latin, twelve French and three used a mixture of
French and Latin. The situation is even more interesting for commoners: one hundred and
thirty-two people addressed the commission, one hundred of whom spoke in English, twenty-
one in French, ten in a mixture of French and Latin and only one in Welsh (Richter 188-190).
This happened in Hereford, only a few miles away from Wales. In other words, 75% of
commoners used English, which proves that the vernacular was still quite important for many
people, but 23% of them tried to impress the commission with the highest-ranked idiom they
could possibly speak.
75.00%
23.00% 2.00%
Commoners
English
French-
Latin/Latin/French
Welsh
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New Chaucer Society 2018 University of Toronto
Besides, we know that out of the 64% of commoners living in rural areas, only 9.4% used
French while out of the 36% living in cities, almost 49% spoke either French or a mixture of
French and Latin. There was consequently a major difference between the province and the
cities, a difference that was not only geographical or political but also ideological. In the
province, people are traditionally more conservative than in urban areas, where both
languages and cultures are subjected to a strong homogenization.
As you can see, this social snobbery was already very much influencing the linguistic
situation, even of the most uneducated members of the population. And interestingly enough,
this notion is also brilliantly illustrated by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. If J. R. R. Tolkien
was correct in his 1934 lecture to the Philological Society, then Chaucer was not only a gifted
poet but also a remarkable philologist, thinking like a linguist of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. In this respect, Chaucer was probably more conscious than anyone else of the
sociolinguistic situation in England.
The Summoner’s Tale is a wonderful example of Chaucer’s abilities as a sociolinguist, for it
illustrates this plurilingualism and the sense of social snobbery made obvious by the details of
Cantilupe’s beatification commission. Indeed, in that Tale, the friar often uses Latin, which
seems normal for a cleric, but also tends to punctuate his speech with French phrases,
especially when he is addressing Thomas, “O Thomas, je vous dy, Thomas, Thomas!”
(III.1832), and his wife, “’Now dame,’ quod he, ‘now je vous dy sanz doute’” (III.1838).
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Here, the Friar obviously uses fragments of French in order to make apparent his social rank
and to impress Thomas’s wife. But when the friar asks Thomas about the whereabouts of his
spouse, Thomas shows little desire to react to this linguistic competition and answers in
provincial Middle English, “‘Yond in the yerd I trowe that she be, [...] and she wol come
anon’” (III.1798-99). Had he said that very same sentence a few centuries earlier, he would
have said, “Geond on thæm geared ic tuwie that heo beo, [...] and heo wile on an cuman” (4),
which shows very little difference between Old English and Thomas’s own idiom. Yet, when
his wife finally joins them, she starts reacting to the friar’s linguistic prowess and flirtatious
words with the same provincial Middle English, but this time enriched by French words
(“desire”, “disport”, “plese”, l. 1826, 1830, 1831). And in fact,
her by-play with the friar is meant to show an urge towards social climbing, a
readiness to side with, and flirt with, what she takes to be the upper classes. She uses the
French vocabulary of romantic involvement not because she needs it or has no other
words available, but to indicate, or to pretend, that she is, or was, or one day will be,
something better than a farmer’s wife in a barnyard. (7)
Chaucer was, in other words, quite aware of the importance of French and English
bilingualism in England and of the prestige associated with French. And like a true
sociolinguist, he shows how language could be manipulated to enhance one’s social rank, thus
echoing in a work fiction the data collected during the beatification commission. In that sense,
the linguistic consequences of the Norman invasion were as much the result of the Anglo-
Saxon’s own snobbery as the new rulers’ desire to impose their own idiom. After all, even the
Pardoner recognizes that
in Latyn I speke a wordes few,
To saffron with my predicacioun,
And for to stire hem to devocioun
(VI.344-46)
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