Numerous historical studies have demonstrated that individual as well as social multilingualism is not a new phenomenon, but has been an important characteristic of Europe for centuries (cf. e.g. Mihm 2010; Greule 2006). In the history of German, a wide range of text sources directly document multilingual writing practices, giving us clear evidence of situations of multilingualism in past societies (McLelland 2004; Ganslmayer 2016; Schmid 2017; Pahta et al. 2018; Glaser/Prinz/Ptashnyk 2021; Krogull 2021). In German linguistics, in other philologies as well as in neighbouring disciplines, the topic of multilingual communication in various spheres of life has gained significant importance and interest in the last decade. In the language historiography of German, however, research has focused primarily on medieval language contact between Latin and German, most notably in the domains of religion and law. Other periods, other linguistic constellations and also other text genres have received comparatively little attention so far. This conference therefore intends to address these open research questions by focusing on multilingualism in the history of German from the early modern period to the beginning of the 20th century.
The following research aspects are in the foreground of the conference:
- Multilingualism in selected public domains, especially law, education, religion, administration and the press;
- Multilingual practices in private writing (e.g. letters or diaries);
- Multilingualism and language contact in border areas, e.g. in the Danish-German, Dutch- German, German-French, German-Polish border areas etc.;
- Contacts between varieties of German and minority languages;
- Historical multilingualism in the context of migration and mobility.
Nicola McLelland (University of Nottingham) and Wim Vandenbussche (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) have confirmed their participation as keynote speakers.
The conference addresses international researchers of all philologies and related disciplines who are interested in historical texts partly written in German and partly in another contact language. We welcome studies on new data, especially from less-explored contact settings and from diverse domains, ranging from the early modern period to the 20th century. Furthermore, we look forward to new theoretical approaches to historical multilingualism. The event is intended to advance the exchange and accumulation of previous findings in this field as well as the initiation of further collaborations and projects.
We welcome synchronically or diachronically oriented contributions on the above- mentioned research aspects. Presentations will be scheduled for 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion.
Please send your abstracts (max. 300 words) until the 1st of December 2023 to the following e-mail address: kerstin.roth1@tu-dresden.de. You can expect a response from us by the end of January 2024. Presentations should preferably be held in German or, if necessary, in English.
Venue: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Germany)
Conference organisation: Andreas Krogull (Zürich, andreas.krogull@ds.uzh.ch), Kerstin Roth (Dresden, kerstin.roth1@tu-dresden.de), Stefaniya Ptashnyk (Heidelberg, ptashnyk@uni- heidelberg.de)
Literatur:
Ganslmayer, Christine (2016): Sprachkombination und Sprachmischung in deutsch-lateinischen Mischtexten. Überlegungen zu Analyse, Formen und Funktionen. In: Claudia Wich-Reif (Hrsg.): Historische Sprachkontaktforschung. (Jahrbuch für Germanistische Sprachgeschichte 7). Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter, S. 76–115.
Glaser, Elvira; Prinz, Michael; Ptashnyk, Stefaniya (2021): Historisches Codeswitching mit Deutsch. Multilinguale Praktiken in der Sprachgeschichte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Greule, Albrecht (2006): Sprachgeschichte – Sprachkontakt – Sprachkultur. Perspektiven der mitteleuropäischen Germanistik. In: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107, S. 435–445.
Krogull, Andreas (2021): Rethinking historical multilingualism and language contact ’from below‘. Evidence from the Dutch-German borderlands in the long 19th century. Dutch Crossing. Journal of Low Countries Studies 45 (2), p. 147–170.
McLelland, Nicola (2004): A historical study of codeswitching in writing: German and Latin in Schottelius’ Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen HaubtSprache (1663). In: International Journal of Bilingualism 8 (4), p. 499–523.
Mihm, Arend (2010): Mehrsprachigkeit und Sprachdynamik im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. In: Claudine Moulin; Fausto Ravida; Nikolaus Ruge (Hrsg.): Sprache in der Stadt. Akten der 25. Tagung des Internationalen Arbeitskreises Historische Stadtsprachenforschung. Heidelberg: Winter, S. 11–54.
Pahta, Päivi; Skaffari, Janne; Wright, Laura (2018): Multilingual Practices in Language History: New Perspectives in Language History. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Schmid, Hans Ulrich (2017): Ich mêino facta et dicta. „Code switching“ im frühen Mittelalter (Sitzungsberichte der Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologischhistorische Klasse, Bd. 142/1). Hirzel: Leipzig.