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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 9:3 (2019) ► pp.378–416

Diachrony of code switching stages in medieval business accounts

The Mercers’ livery company of London

| International Centre for Higher Spanish Studies, University of Cantabria

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.

Keywords: diachronic variation and change, code switching, Mercers’ livery company of London, later Middle Ages, written business accounts, Romance languages, anglicisation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Toward a linguistic study of code switching in 14th- and 15th-century business manuscripts from London
  • 2.Historical background: The evolution of the Mercers of London within medieval multilingual communities
  • 3.Linguistic framework: Romance-English code switching in the domain of business
  • 4.Sources: The Wardens’ Accounts of the Mercers’ livery company of London
  • 5.Data: Code switching stages in late medieval business accounts by the Mercers of London
    • 5.1Early stage of mixed business writing in the Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts
    • 5.2Later stage of mixed business writing in the Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts
    • 5.3Moribund stage of mixed business writing in the Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts
  • 6.Results: From early intraword switching to late intersentential switching
  • 7.Conclusion: Code switched business writing in between written monolingualisms
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.18001.car
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