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Multilingualism and the Early Modern City: Language and Society in Norwich (1500–1750): 15 (English Association Monographs: English at the Interface, 15) - Hardcover

Joby, Christopher

 
9781805969020: Multilingualism and the Early Modern City: Language and Society in Norwich (1500–1750): 15 (English Association Monographs: English at the Interface, 15)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1805969021 ISBN 13: 9781805969020
Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2026

Synopsis

In 1565, migrants escaping religious persecution and economic hardship in the Low Countries began to arrive in the city of Norwich in eastern England. Many of the migrants spoke Dutch, whilst others spoke French, with some speaking both languages. By 1578, the migrants, known locally as Strangers, accounted for about 40 per cent of Norwich’s population. The city therefore had three language communities: English, Dutch, and French. Members of each language community used Latin, making early modern Norwich a quadrilingual city.

In this book, Christopher Joby examines the language practices that emerged in early modern Norwich and the epistemic outcomes of contact between these four languages. He does this from multiple perspectives, devoting chapters to language education, language practices by social domain, language varieties, the outcomes of lexical interference, proper names, and translation. The final chapter, on language shift, examines the processes by which Norwich returned by the mid-eighteenth century to being an essentially monolingual, Anglophone, city.

This is the first book-length study of the language practices and outcomes of contact between languages in an early modern European city, and will be of interest to scholars of multilingualism, historical sociolinguistics, contact linguistics, dialectology, translation studies, and British and European early modern history.

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About the Author

Christopher Joby, FRHistS, has published many articles, six monographs, and one co-edited volume on the history of the Dutch language in contact situations, and multilingualism in historical contexts.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Liverpool University Press
Publication date
2026
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1805969021
ISBN 13 
9781805969020
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
288