• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 154

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

A tale of six cities: a diachronic approach to languages and urbanity

Authors: Wilton, Antje; Mullen, Alex
Submitted by: Wilton, Antje (University of Siegen, Germany)

In this thematic session we combine sociolinguistic approaches and historical perspectives to investigate language and the city. The session is an exchange platform  for classicists, historical linguists, medievalists and modern sociolinguists. The motivation for such cooperation is the increasing interest among historically focused disciplines in modern sociolinguistic research to inform the investigation of language use in societies of the past. Conversely, modern sociolinguistics can benefit from insights gained in historical research, not least in sharing methodologies and understanding the historical developments in societies and speech communities which shape the way their members communicate in the present.

Language use in the city – both written and oral – not only reflects current social patterns and practices, but is also partly a result of long-term developments in the history of urban speech communities. Combining modern and historical approaches leads to a better understanding of urban speech communities which are no longer active, but have left evidence of their linguistic activities. A combination of both approaches also sheds light on how contemporary urban communication patterns and practices are rooted in historical developments and their evolution over time. Furthermore, evidence from contemporary societies and ancient testimonia allows us to compare the way in which people have socially constructed urban language(s) as opposed to rural language(s) in their discourses across time and cultures.

Of particular interest are the methodological challenges arising out of the different types of evidence available for each discipline. Obviously, a historical investigation relies heavily on written evidence. However, insights gained in modern sociolinguistics about the relationship between oral and written language use might be a step towards providing a fuller picture of an extinct speech community and its communicative practices. Similarly, contemporary research methods such as ‘linguistic landscapes’ can be enriched by the methodology and theory which has developed from the long tradition of interdisciplinary investigation of the written word in past societies. Indeed, the Ancient Greeks were cataloguing and analyzing the written word in its urban setting as far back as the third century BC. One important aim of this session will be to establish the nature of the development of research methods into language and urbanity.

For this thematic session we invite presentations that shed light on language use either in a historical or modern urban setting or which combine a modern with a historical perspective for  the same urban setting. Contributions should ideally focus on one particular city. We will replace the ‘X’ in the current title with a number once speakers have been allocated. Presentations need not be bound to a particular methodology. Different approaches are welcome; however, linguistic landscapes and analyses of oral and written discourse about urban and rural varieties are of special interest.

References

Adams, James N., Janse, Mark & Swain, Simon (eds.) (2002): Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language Contact and the Written Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baird, Jennifer & Taylor, Claire (eds.) (2011): Ancient Graffiti in Context. London: Routledge.

Braunmüller, Kurt & Ferraresi, Gisella (eds.) (2003): Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Cotton, H. M., Hoyland, R. G. et al. (eds.) (2009): From Hellenism to Islam. Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East. Cambridge: CUP.

Mullen, Alex & James, Patrick (eds.) (forthcoming): Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds. Cambridge: CUP.

Pavlenko, Aneta (2010): Linguistic landscape of Kyiv, Ukraine: A diachronic study. In Shohamy, E., Barni, M. & E. Ben Rafael (eds.): Linguistic Landscape in the City. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 133-150.

Wright, Roger (2004): Latin and English as world languages. English Today 80, Vol.20, No. 4, 3-13.