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Project

Language contact: Local, European and theoretical perspectives (OZRSAB11)

This sabbatical proposal intends to address three interlocking dimensions of language contact in 19th century Europe. Using hitherto unexplored original archive sources, we will first try and shed new light on the academic study of Dutch in 19-century Brussels, setting into relief the tensions between low-prestige Dutch and high-prestige French at the time, and highlighting the instrumentalization of academic work in a broader context of romantic nation-state building. The central issues of this micro-study reappear in a project for a prestigious European funding application, aimed at charting the social history of language contact in 19th century Europe. With work packages on migration, dialects, multilingual practices, language and education, historical language policy, the function of linguae francae, and the role of intellectuals in public debates, we hope to build a strong research consortium, building on the academic partnerships fostered in our research group over the past two decades. Both projects will be sustained by an innovative theoretical framework, as developed in a new international handbook on language contact that will also be prepared and edited during the sabbatical leave.
Date:1 Oct 2021 →  30 Sep 2023
Keywords:Language contact, historical sociolinguistics, European language history
Disciplines:Sociolinguistics, Historical linguistics, Contact linguistics