Diachrony of code switching stages in medieval business accounts

Abstract

This article presents the results of a diachronic survey on the multilingual account books authored by the wardens of the Mercers’ premier livery company of the City of London from 1390 to 1464. The study deployed here applies an extended version of Wright’s three-stage model of code switched business writing that introduces a previous phase of Romance monolingualism and a later phase of English monolingualism. It is found that the change from Latin and French to English as the new language of business record in the London Mercers’ archives was orderly and gradual rather than straightforward, and characterised by a less predictable intervening code switching period. The analysis is of considerable value for expanding our knowledge of medieval written multilingualism, as well as for the development of English as an administrative language.

Community of Practice in the Mercers of the City of London

“…Real-time analyses have shown gradual and orderly processes from the exclusive use of Latin and French to the adoption of English -through codemixing between Latin or French and English-in the medieval financial accounts by the Mercers' guild of London and the Grocers' guild of London (Alcolado Carnicero, 2019Miller, 2002;Wright, 2002Wright, : 475-479, 2012. As Figure 1 evinces, years with financial accounts written only in Latin or French occurred chiefly before the 1400s in the two guilds, years with financial accounts in a mixture of Latin, French, and English occurred notably from the 1400s in the two guilds and, finally, years with financial accounts mainly in English occurred mostly between the 1420s and the 1440s in the Grocers' guild of London and in the Mercers' guild of London after the 1440s.…”