Artes Dictandi; use of French and of verse in letters; the verse epistle as a lyric genre; autobiographical ballade sequences; appropriation and imitation; doubt as between art and actuality

In this introductory chapter, an invitation is provided to begin a journey into the intricacies of Black Caribbean immigrant literacies through the use of Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as exceptional Black imaginaries already inscribed in the world. Through the adept depiction of racialization and transracialization steeped in the Black experience in the US as juxtaposed against the notion of Black immigrants as a ‘model minority,’ the necessity for examining race in relation to the languaging and semiotizing of Black Caribbean immigrants is outlined. Presenting a brief overview of the emerging global project focused on racialized language, this chapter lays the groundwork for the painting of a compelling portrait of the holistic literacies of Black Caribbean immigrant youth. By signaling the attention to an ultimate positioning of flourishing as a necessary imperative for and alternative to rethinking literacies based on ‘success,’ the chapter concludes with a focus on solidarity between Black Caribbean and other populations as a key impetus for this work.

For over fifty years, Canada’s language regime has centered - in theory, policy, and practice - on a binary: linguistic duality and authority of the two settler colonial powers, English and French. The legislative enshrinement of status for these colonial languages, by way of the 1969 Official Languages Act, has on most accounts failed in multiple ways. As is well documented, legislated equality between French and English has rarely manifested itself in practice. Less attention - scholarly or political - has been paid to the Indigenous languages erased by both political discourse and public policy in Canada. What limited policy attention there has been has focused on Indigenous languages as second languages. The development of the Canadian Parliament’s Indigenous Languages Act, launched by the Government of Canada on December 5, 2016, attempted to fill this gap. Analysis of this process reveals the tensions within Canada’s established language regime, while putting into sharp relief the difficulties of policy and policymakers to attend to - and move beyond - Canada’s colonial past and framework.

Path dependency relies upon historicity and context to understand how institutions sustain themselves through time and are compelled to change at critical junctures. Some consider this approach as being deterministic, focused on external shocks to institutions and better at explaining stability rather than change. Others consider that there is also agency in institutional change, that actors may seize upon opportunities within institutions to find novel solutions to new challenges, or that a succession of incremental changes may fundamentally alter institutions without any external shock. We understand language regimes as being path dependent, while accepting that various actors may work within the regime to bring forth incremental changes in language policies. These changes may occur through various policy processes rather than through major disruptions. The impetus for this process may come from within the institutions, where state actors may try to adjust policies to a new context, or from language groups who express dissatisfaction towards the regime and mobilize to demand change. The chapter first discusses the possibility that language regime can change; second, it draws upon the institutional literature to describe how a language regime may change; third, it uses the case of French in Ontario to illustrate this process.

Although the Channel Islands have been united politically with Great Britain since 1204, each of the four largest islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Sark and Alderney, feature Norman dialects, known locally as Jèrriais, Guernésiais, Sercquiais and Aurignais. For many centuries, these were the main everyday languages of most islanders, and Jèrriais and Guernésiais enjoy a literary tradition dating back to the nineteenth century. Owing to the spread of English throughout the archipelago during the twentieth century in particular, the dialects have all suffered a sharp decline in speaker numbers, with the Norman of Alderney now extinct. The insular varieties are not homogeneous and the linguistic consequences, both lexical and structural, of the extensive language contact between English and the three surviving dialects have served to further differentiate insular Norman from the Norman varieties spoken in mainland Normandy. The realisation that insular Norman is declining rapidly in terms of speaker numbers has prompted the establishment of local language planning measures, currently more established in Jersey than on the other islands.

The diametrically opposed outcomes of the Reformation in England and France have led historians to presume that there were significant differences in their religious situations before the Reformation that help account for that ultimate divergence. This chapter argues that any such presumption is wide of the mark. Not only were the supposed ‘preconditions’ for the success of the Reformation in England (such as Renaissance humanism, anticlericalism and church-state tension) more evident in France, but the early diffusion of Reformation teachings was swifter and more widespread there as well. Although in the second quarter of the sixteenth century the Reformation received increasing royal support in England but not in France, that early progress was insecure and was briefly reversed. Decisive divergence between the two realms in this regard began only around 1560, and in each of them the outcome might still have been different under other circumstances. The ultimate outcomes reflected the interplay of political contingency with pre-existing differences not in religious experience but in political structures and political culture, which put the English monarchy in a position to impose its will upon the English nation, but left the French monarchy less able not only to impose change but also to suppress it.

Jocelin of Brakelond was a monk at Bury St Edmunds monastery at the time of the famous Abbot Samson, whose election and abbacy Jocelin describes. Jocelin writes his account of the monastery in a Latin that contains references to both the Bible and classical writers, as well as words drawn from Greek, or based on contemporary French and English.

The Domesday book, surviving now in the National Archives in London, was the great land survey of 1086 instigated by William the Conqueror to enable him to tax the land correctly. It summarises in a largely formulaic format in Latin the holdings of each of the royal tenants and the population and property across most of the country. The huge work contains amazing detail about named individuals. Here short excerpts are also included from Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English and from the work called the Dialogue of the Exchequer which describes the DOmesday book and its inception.

Gerald of Wales was one of the greatest British writers of the Middle Ages, writing extensively on politics, literature, ethnography, and on himself. A man of many interests and linguistic competence in a number of languages, he felt himself sidelined in his desire to gain high office within the Church. His Speculum Ecclesiae and Gemma Ecclesiae hold a critical mirror up to the Church of his day, and contain much satirical humour. His works on the culture of Wales and Ireland, drawing on his own experiences and travels, are classics in their field. Gerald was also very learned in classical and patristic writings, often quoting St. Jerome who, like Gerald, suffered from a chip on his shoulder.

Large numbers of different accounts are preserved in the archives which record many fascinating details about everyday life whether in the royal household (with particular items indicating various incidents), in trade, in ecclesiastical contexts. The price of items is also of interest, as well as the names and professions of those involved in making or transporting the items recorded.

Glanvill is the supposed author of this treatise on the laws and customs of England, a work that was a twelfth-century precursor to the legal compendium of Bracton, composed in the thirteenth century. Glanvill introduces the concept of law and justice and explains the different Latin legal terms, many drawn from contemporary French, in use at the time and the different legal procedures that had developed since the Conquest.

Duke Humfrey, a younger son of king Henry IV and younger brother of king Henry V, is famous for the library he donated to the University of Oxford and whose name was given to the room above the Divinity School built to house his books. In this everyday document, another CLose Roll, one finds a list of the furniture granted to him by his father when as a young man he was moving to Hadleigh Castle in Essex. This list of armour and domestic items is fascinating for the richly multilingual vocabulary with classical words mixing with late Latin, and with terms derived from Greek and French and English. Some of these words are morphologically integrated into Latin, others are left unintegrated giving a feel of code-switching.

John of Garland, Alexander Neckam and Roger Bacon were three great writers of the thirteenth century who all wrote on various aspects of Latin language and culture, and of the importance of, and ways of, learning Latin. Garland and Neckam wrote imaginative lexicographical works, teaching Latin words by reference to everyday life and vernacular words. Roger Bacon wrote many learned works on numerous subjects and believed in the necessity of learning foreign languages, primarly Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic in order to study the Bible and sciences.