Medieval English Multilingualisms

Abstract

This article introduces the nonmedievalist reader to the multilingual landscape of England 700-1400. Building on recent work exploring in particular the relationships among English, French, and Latin in medieval England, it discusses a series of "multilingual moments" from a range of sources, including letters, poems, travel writings, and French language teaching texts. Together, these examples build a picture of the complex interrelationships of languages, both spoken and written, that existed for medieval English people at home and when traveling abroad. Then, as now, people can be seen using their linguistic resources for pragmatic and creative effect. We demonstrate that multilingualism is nothing new. From a methodological perspective, our work also underlines the importance of viewing linguistic attitudes in their particular intellectual and historical contexts.

An analysis of the effectiveness of linguistic ecosystem building on local landscape language governance

“…Meanwhile, linguistic landscape is an important part of urban public space, which comprehensively reflects the degree of civilization exchange and mutual understanding, regional cultural connotation, and language governance level of the city, and is also one of the ways to provide high-quality urban public services [4][5]. The linguistic landscape reflects the covariation relationship between language and social context, and its text content, language selection, placement, presentation ratio, and other elements have an implicit regulating effect on the construction of the urban linguistic environment and the construction of the country's foreign image [6].…”