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10 - Studying Historical Multilingualism in Everyday Life: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2023

By
Jan Fellerer
Edited by
Aneta Pavlenko
Aneta Pavlenko
Affiliation:
University of York
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Summary

The chapter explores what type of sources can help us understand multilingualism in the past. Since direct observation and elicitation techniques are not available, tackling the “poor data problem” is one of the key issues in the study of historic multilingualism. The chapter focuses on the late Habsburg Monarchy and its linguistically exceptionally diverse populations. Scholars frequently draw on the ethnographic maps, demographic data, and language laws that have come down to us from historic times to make sense of this diversity. Important as these sources are, they only offer a bird’s eye view of the realm’s multilingualism. Other sources are needed to explore its functioning in day-to-day life in particular communities. The chapter argues that memoirs, late-Habsburg satirical magazines, and criminal court records can all serve this purpose. They afford unique glimpses into everyday life in the past and allow us to reconstruct the workings of historical multilingualism in terms of its social underpinnings and linguistic outcomes.

Keywords

Keywords: historic multilingualismhistorical sociolinguisticslanguage contactAustro-Hungarian EmpireHabsburg Monarchynineteenth centurycourt recordsLembergLwów
Type
Chapter
Information
Multilingualism and History , pp. 187 - 204
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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