History of linguistics: ‘Standard Latin’, and Pedagogy
Summary
Recent work in the history of early medieval linguistics has challenged a number of assumptions about the representation of Latin and language usage during the period. Given the way Latin is often positioned as a standard for literacy and schooling, these revisions of early medieval linguistics also raise questions for teaching literacy, language arts, and standard English. Late classical and early medieval grammatical discourse presents not a monolithic view of Latin but various accounts of pronunciation, spelling, and semantics. Some stigmatize contemporary usage, others do not. In addition, historical texts such as the 9th-century History of the Langobards represent heterogeneous and bilingual speech communities in which Latin and Germanic languages are used in different contexts. Rather than constraining the history of linguistics as a ‘specialist’s add on’, we can reconceptualize writing histories of linguistics as contributions to a critical cultural history, uncovering the assumptions and practices of not only linguistic theory and description but also language teaching practices, ideological constructions of national languages, representations of language differences and identity, and attitudes toward language usage and standardization.