Social networks and mixed-language business writingLatin/French/English in the wardens'accounts of the Mercers' company of London, 1390-1464

Resumen

Language mixing between Latin, French, and English has been acknowledged to be a widespread phenomenon in a variety of texts composed in Britain during the late medieval period. Until very recently, however, mixed-language manuscripts have not received enough attention from academic research mainly due to its contempt for the ¿linguistic impurity¿ of the texts. Contenido de la investigación This PhD dissertation presents one of the first pieces of historical sociolinguistic research into both the orderly combination of Latin, French, and English and the process of language shift from Latin and French to English in the financial accounts of the premier London livery company: the Mercers¿ Company. More specifically, the primary objective of this study is to apply the social network theory, as promulgated by the Milroys (L. Milroy 1980/87; J. Milroy and L. Milroy 1985; L. Milroy and J. Milroy 1992), to the group of mercers responsible for keeping the multilingual wardens¿ accounts from 1390-91 to 1463-64, as edited by Jefferson (2009). This thesis statement can be divided into two main research questions: (i) How do Latin, French, and English coexist in the mercantile records of the Mercers of London during the late medieval period? (ii) To what extent do the ego-centric and socio-centric networks of which the mercer-informant is part contribute to his mixing practices and to the re-emergence of English as the language sanctioned for business writing? Dependent on the latter, there is a third research question: (iii) Who are the authors of the mixed-language manuscripts under study? In view of the need to ¿individuate¿ data in social network research expressed by Bergs (2006), authorship for the whole Mercers¿ Wardens¿ Accounts is proposed insofar as yearly accounts are kept jointly by four wardens and, as a result, doubts about their precise shares arise. I draw upon textual evidence available in the business accounts and especially upon Hope¿s (1994) socio-historical linguistic evidence in order to ascribe linguistic data to single account-keepers. Means of action in the main data analysis is conditioned by the goal of attributing a clear-cut authorship to the texts. Both kinds of evidence turn out to be very useful in this task. Conclusión Results from the simultaneous authorship attribution and the empirical analysis of mixed-language variants in the Mercers¿ Wardens¿ Accounts provide interesting insights on the two main research questions: (i) There is a close link between the process of Anglicisation in the Mercers¿ Wardens¿ Accounts, on the one hand, and the way Latin, French, and English are mixed during this process. Code switching is part of the process and constitutes an intermediate stage towards the eventual establishment of English as the official language of business record-keeping. (ii) Master-apprentice ego-centric ties prove to be decisive in the use and/or the transmission of variants from successive mixed-language stages. Also in correlation with the independent variable of generation, socio-centric networks are able to explain why mercer-wardens tend to approximate more closely (or not) to the written norm.