Language and the Grand Tour: Linguistic Experiences of Travelling in Early Modern Europe. By ArturoTosi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020. xiv + 306 p. £85 (hb). ISBN 978‐1‐10‐876‐636‐6 (original) (raw)
2021, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
The linguistic history of Europe has been at the centre of a number of recent publications, many of which have been inclined to blur the sharp distinction between synchrony and diachrony. As a result, the chronicle of our European languages, which includes tensions, conflicts and mutual influence, has been enlightened by new studies concentrating on language attitudes, variation and change during a period that was crucial for the consolidation of multilingualism and the rise of modern vernaculars. Today this field is increasingly referred to as historical sociolinguistics or the social history of language, as both linguists and historians attempt to apply the tenets and methodology of contemporary sociolinguistics to the interpretation of the social functions of language in the past. Since the early modern period is crucial in the history of Europe with regard to both the interaction between languages and their standardisation, this book starts from the assumption that the experiences of travellers on the Grand Tour can provide rich insights into social stratification in language use during that period. Not only do the travel writings of this mobile group provide a valuable source of information about language contact but they also illuminate how socialisation with the locals led, on the one hand, to conscious borrowings from prestigious foreign peers and, on the other, to linguistic disorientation when travellers were confronted with lower-class speech and rural vernaculars. By taking a sociolinguistic approach to exploring these written resources, it is hoped that the result will contribute to the description of the Grand Tour as a unique case study of population movement, language change and education in early modern Europe.
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