Minority languages between reformation and revolution
Date
2009Author
Knooihuizen, Remco Mathijs
Metadata
Abstract
In this thesis, I intend to further our knowledge of the sociolinguistics of Early Modern
minority languages. Social and political developments in North-Western Europe in the
16th to 18th centuries caused an emancipation of vernacular languages, which took over
from Latin as the main language in official domains. The sociolinguistics of this change
are well known (e.g. Burke 2004); the fate of languages that did not make it to this new
status, emerging ‘minority languages’, remains under-researched.
Chapter 2 introduces some of the terminology used in this study. I discuss four categories
of research methods into minority language shift and how they are applicable to research
on historical situations, which often suffers from ‘bad data’. I then present a model of
ethnolinguistic vitality that I use to survey the socio-historical backgrounds of several
minority language groups in Chapter 3.
Chapter 3 begins with a brief presentation of minority language groups from the Early
Modern period. I choose three language groups to focus on in more depth: speakers of
Norn in Shetland, of Flemish in Northern France, and of Sorbian in Germany. A survey of
these three cases, with the initial wider presentation, identifies three recurring issues that
are the focus of the subsequent chapters.
The first of these is the influence of demographic change (Chapter 4). In the formation of
nation-states in this period, many speakers of the majority language migrate to peripheral
minority-language areas. I present two historical-demographic studies showing the integration
of immigrants into the local community through intermarriage, based on 17th-century
population registers from Shetland and Dunkirk (France). Both show a large amount of intermarriage, despite a bias towards in-group marriage. Intermarriage brings the majority
language into the minority-language home; the strength of the bias against intermarriage
is likely to be a factor in the rate of shift, one of the main differences between Shetland
and Dunkirk.
Language policies are the topic of Chapter 5. They are an important part of minority
language studies in the present day, particularly with regard to language maintenance. I
survey the language legislation that existed in Shetland, French Flanders, and Lusatia, its
purpose and implementation, and its effects on language shift. Purpose and implementation
of language policies were limited, and its effect on minority language communities
therefore only secondary.
Chapter 6 is about target varieties in language shift. The question of whether language
shift happened through education in a standard variety or through contacts with majoritylanguage
speakers from nearby areas can be answered by looking at the new majoritylanguage
dialect in the minority area.
I undertake two different studies in this context. The first is an analysis of Shetland Scots
using theories of dialect contact. The dialect has a number of ‘standardised’ features, but
I argue these are mainly due to koinéisation of various dialects of Scots immigrants to
Shetland and a second-language variety of Scots spoken by the local population. The
second is a study of the French dialect of French Flanders using computational methods
of data comparison on data taken from dialect atlases. This dialect shares features with
neighbouring Picard dialects, but we can also identify Standard French features. This
pattern correlates with what we know of migration to the area (Chapter 4). Both new
dialects suggest the shifting population acquired the majority language mainly through
contacts with majority-language speakers in their direct environment.
In conclusion, I show that language shift in the Early Modern period was an organic
process, where the inception, the rate, and the result of shift were steered by the minority population’s social networks. The influence of institutions often blamed for language
shift in modern situations – educational and language policies – was very restricted. In
addition, I show that methods used in modern sociolinguistics can be successfully applied
to historical situations, despite the bad data problem. This opens the door for more
extensive research into the area.