Introduction: Historical Ethnography of Multilingual Texts and Practices

This introduction examines how the research lenses and frameworks used to analyse present-day multilingualism can guide us towards a more sophisticated understanding of multilingual practices in early modern Europe (c. 1450–1700). It argues that centring the study of early modern European multilingualism on language and literacy practices creates a productive overlap between literary historical research in this area and critical and ethnographic lines of sociolinguistic research into late modern multilingualism. Such an approach can work towards a layered understanding of language use over time that is attuned to linguistic and social difference. In particular, it can show how dominant social groups conferred value on particular named languages and practices in ways that have shaped the historical evidence with which we work and the intellectual and institutional frameworks that we have inherited—and so help us to perceive ways to be more inclusive in how we locate and analyse sources. After considering linguistic fixity and fluidity in early modern Europe and the value of approaching multilingualism as a form of heteroglossia, this introduction then outlines key precedents in previous research, and identifies four interlinked research foci that the chapters in this collection share with recent work on present-day multilingualism.