Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c. 800-c. 1250 ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler (review)

Elizabeth Tyler's lengthy Introduction explains that her book's 'engagement with the past grows out of a particular linguistic and political present' as it situates 'the study of medieval English multilingualism in the contemporary language politics of England' (p. 1). This includes both within Britain and the European Union, and in the context of the rise of English as a global language. Tyler provides a useful and multifaceted introduction to the volume, necessary for those who may have little understanding of the intricacies involved in contemporary English language politics. She covers topics such as the symbolic value of multilingualism, linguistic policies and how these relate to contemporary England, modern monolingualism, and medieval multilingualism. Tyler explains that the focus of the volume is specifically on England and is driven by 'a desire to attend to the relationship between the present and the past of the language politics of England and from a recognition that these present politics are different outside of England' (p. 2).

There are eighteen contributions to the volume (including the 'Introduction'). The decision not to group the papers into sub-themes allows them to stand solidly as individual essays. The many disciplines covered, from history, literature, linguistics, and manuscript studies, mean that 'no one definition of multilingualism has been adopted or imposed' (p. 10). Rather, the term is taken to mean 'an ability to use more than one language, even in a limited way, within any sphere of life, from reading Latin psalms to negotiating a purchase from a foreign merchant' (p. 10).

A wonderful array of topics is covered, ranging from the role of languages and code-switching in texts produced in King Alfred's court, Abbo of Fleury's stay in Ramsey (985-87), and the interactions between Old English, Medieval Latin, Old Gallo-Romance, and Greek, to an investigation of the Roman language in twelfth-century English historiography. Others include the translation of technical terms in law-codes, and multilingualism in the Court of King Æthelstan. There is also an essay on how social network theory can help to explain linguistic change in the transition from Old to Middle English. The range of topics covered and the authors' abilities to look at the textual evidence from the multilingual environments in which they were produced across all of the contributions are striking. The effect has been to provide fresh insights into the social, cultural, and linguistic contexts of medieval England. Given the volume's title, however, something more might have been said about the insights that can be gained by using modern sociolinguistic models to re-read texts of the past.

The papers originally derive from a conference held in 2006 that aimed to examine multilingualism and linguistic pluralism in medieval English culture from a wide range of perspectives. While the collection succeeds in this, a general picture of multilingualism in medieval England remains elusive for the reader. More could perhaps have been said of languages and their social functions, language contact, vernaculars and their orthographic traditions, bilingualism, translation, dialects, and diglossia. Since 'the chief contribution of this volume lies in simultaneously bringing together the study of multilingualism with interdisciplinary scholarship' (p. 12), the lack of cross-references throughout the book, and of an index, the inclusion of which would surely have facilitated interdisciplinarity, is surprising. The essays themselves, nevertheless, are an excellent contribution to scholarship, and will act as models for further investigations of multilingualism in an historical perspective.