Português
Much work has been done in recent decades on historical multilingualism (e.g. Adams 2003; Pahta et al. 2018; Pavlenko 2023), including individual and collective practices of code-switching and language mixing (i.a. Keller 2020). Alongside this research, considerable attention has been devoted to historical ideas about language standardization and linguistic purism. By contrast, historical reflections on oral and written language mixing have remained comparatively understudied, although authors across a wide range of periods and traditions commented on, evaluated, prescribed, and theorized language mixing long before Roman Jakobson coined the term ‘code-switching’ in 1953 and the phenomenon became the object of systematic investigation.
Some contexts have received intense scholarly attention in recent years, notably Latin–Greek mixing in antiquity (Elder and Mullen 2019: 12-17; Gitner 2023) and early modernity (Barton and Van Rooy 2024), as well as multilingualism and language mixing in relation to national ideologies (e.g. Maxwell and Stergar 2026). However, metalinguistic reflections are usually treated as ancillary to broader topics such as linguistic purism, multilingual practice, or nationalism. This workshop aims to draw them from the margins and explore them systematically as a revealing subject in their own right.
Working on the long history of Latin–Greek language mixing, we propose a series of papers dedicated to historical attitudes towards language mixing as a form of multilingual awareness present from antiquity to modern times, both in western and other traditions. It intends to bring together specialists of different linguistic traditions and diverse approaches, including the history of linguistic ideas, intellectual history, historical sociolinguistics, the history of nationalism, and/or postcolonial studies.
We therefore invite contributions dealing with explicit historical attitudes towards written or oral language mixing occurring in grammaticographical, literary, educational, religious, and/or political contexts. Explicit reflections on language mixing were often made in passing and could range from a cursory remark through a couple of sentences to several pages. Usually embedded in a discussion on another topic, they appear across various genres: e.g. grammars, writing manuals, linguistic treatises, prefaces to multilingual editions, (auto)fiction, as well as letters and other egodocuments.
As there was no uniform framework for language mixing, we are especially interested in its descriptive and prescriptive aspects:
how language mixing was conceptualized and discussed (metalanguage and metaphoric imagery);
attitudes towards language mixing in different historical and sociolinguistic milieux (including language ideologies);
arguments and strategies used to argue in favour or against language mixing (e.g. linguistic riches, poetic licence);
perceived functions of language mixing (e.g. secrecy, semantic precision, evoking a different cultural sphere);
historical attitudes towards practicing ‘language mixers’ and the construction of linguistic ideals for specific social and gender profiles (e.g. the trilingual man, the eloquent courtier, the learned maiden, the missionary, the interpreter, the diplomat, the polylingual nationalist).
Select bibliography
Adams, J. N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge University Press.
Barton, William M., and Raf Van Rooy. 2024. ‘Introduction: Latin–Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity’. Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures 9: 1–26.
Elder, Olivia, and Alex Mullen. 2019. The Language of Roman Letters: Bilingual Epistolography from Cicero to Fronto. Cambridge University Press.
Gitner, Adam. 2023. ‘Civic Metaphors for Lexical Borrowing from Seneca to Gellius’. In Roman Perspectives on Linguistic Diversity: Guardians of a Changing Language, edited by Adam Gitner. Oxford University Press.
Keller, Mareike L. 2020. Code-Switching: Unifying Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Springer Nature.
Maxwell, Alexander, and Rok Stergar. 2026. ‘Polylingual Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans: Reviving a Forgotten History’. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 1–20.
Pahta, Päivi, Janne Skaffari, and Laura Wright, eds. 2018. Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond. De Gruyter Mouton.
Pavlenko, Aneta, ed. 2023. Multilingualism and History. Cambridge University Press.
Some contexts have received intense scholarly attention in recent years, notably Latin–Greek mixing in antiquity (Elder and Mullen 2019: 12-17; Gitner 2023) and early modernity (Barton and Van Rooy 2024), as well as multilingualism and language mixing in relation to national ideologies (e.g. Maxwell and Stergar 2026). However, metalinguistic reflections are usually treated as ancillary to broader topics such as linguistic purism, multilingual practice, or nationalism. This workshop aims to draw them from the margins and explore them systematically as a revealing subject in their own right.
Working on the long history of Latin–Greek language mixing, we propose a series of papers dedicated to historical attitudes towards language mixing as a form of multilingual awareness present from antiquity to modern times, both in western and other traditions. It intends to bring together specialists of different linguistic traditions and diverse approaches, including the history of linguistic ideas, intellectual history, historical sociolinguistics, the history of nationalism, and/or postcolonial studies.
We therefore invite contributions dealing with explicit historical attitudes towards written or oral language mixing occurring in grammaticographical, literary, educational, religious, and/or political contexts. Explicit reflections on language mixing were often made in passing and could range from a cursory remark through a couple of sentences to several pages. Usually embedded in a discussion on another topic, they appear across various genres: e.g. grammars, writing manuals, linguistic treatises, prefaces to multilingual editions, (auto)fiction, as well as letters and other egodocuments.
As there was no uniform framework for language mixing, we are especially interested in its descriptive and prescriptive aspects:
how language mixing was conceptualized and discussed (metalanguage and metaphoric imagery);
attitudes towards language mixing in different historical and sociolinguistic milieux (including language ideologies);
arguments and strategies used to argue in favour or against language mixing (e.g. linguistic riches, poetic licence);
perceived functions of language mixing (e.g. secrecy, semantic precision, evoking a different cultural sphere);
historical attitudes towards practicing ‘language mixers’ and the construction of linguistic ideals for specific social and gender profiles (e.g. the trilingual man, the eloquent courtier, the learned maiden, the missionary, the interpreter, the diplomat, the polylingual nationalist).
Select bibliography
Adams, J. N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge University Press.
Barton, William M., and Raf Van Rooy. 2024. ‘Introduction: Latin–Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity’. Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures 9: 1–26.
Elder, Olivia, and Alex Mullen. 2019. The Language of Roman Letters: Bilingual Epistolography from Cicero to Fronto. Cambridge University Press.
Gitner, Adam. 2023. ‘Civic Metaphors for Lexical Borrowing from Seneca to Gellius’. In Roman Perspectives on Linguistic Diversity: Guardians of a Changing Language, edited by Adam Gitner. Oxford University Press.
Keller, Mareike L. 2020. Code-Switching: Unifying Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Springer Nature.
Maxwell, Alexander, and Rok Stergar. 2026. ‘Polylingual Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans: Reviving a Forgotten History’. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 1–20.
Pahta, Päivi, Janne Skaffari, and Laura Wright, eds. 2018. Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond. De Gruyter Mouton.
Pavlenko, Aneta, ed. 2023. Multilingualism and History. Cambridge University Press.