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Latin/French/English in the Wardens’ Accounts of the Mercers’ Company of London, 1390-1464

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Latin/French/English in the Wardens’ Accounts of the Mercers’ Company of London, 1390-1464 UNIVERSIDAD DE CASTILLA-LA MANCHA Facultad de Letras SOCIAL NETWORKS AND MIXED-LANGUAGE BUSINESS WRITING: LATIN/FRENCH/ENGLISH IN THE WARDENS’ ACCOUNTS OF THE MERCERS’ COMPANY OF LONDON, 1390-1464 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of International Philosophiæ Doctor to the Departamento de Filología Moderna AUTHOR: José Miguel Alcolado Carnicero SUPERVISOR: Dr Javier Enrique Díaz Vera Ciudad Real, 2013 Item, ressu pur le readyng de la thesis en cest bok i Declaration I hereby declare that this PhD dissertation is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously submitted by another person, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text. José Miguel Alcolado Carnicero iii Acknowledgements This research has been co-funded by the European Social Fund and the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha within the Regional Operational Programme ESF CLM 2007-13. I gratefully acknowledge (even more in these times of tribulation) both the European Commission and the now defunct Viceconsejería de Ciencia y Tecnología for their economic support through the following fellowships and grants: Ayuda para la Formación de Personal Investigador (no. 08/002; 2008-11), Ayudas para la financiación de los precios públicos de los estudios de Doctorado (2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11), and Ayudas complementarias “José Castillejo” para estancias de investigación en centros extranjeros (2009 and 2010). I am also extremely thankful to all those people who have contributed to this PhD dissertation coming true. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my loose-knit network of academic supporters. In particular, I am very grateful to Dr Javier Díaz Vera (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha), my supervisor and actual adopter of the research topic, for helping me in everything one can imagine: from acting almost like a psychologist when, let us say, things were not working to carrying out much more menial tasks like, for instance, reading fuzzy drafts and correcting spelling mistakes. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr Laura Wright (University of Cambridge), the researcher pioneering the linguistic approach to mixed-language business writing, i.e. the innovator, for always showing me her enthusiastic interest, giving me wise counsel, and expressing warm words of encouragement in our recurrent discussions on my work. I also wish to thank Prof. Matthew Davies (Centre for Metropolitan History) for being the host researcher during my three-month stay (June to August 2010) as a Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Historical Research (University of London); his valuable comments also threw light on some hitherto doubtful issues in my research. Weakly linked colleagues I have met in the different international conferences attended and who have encouraged me to continue with my research deserve to be mentioned. I must recall here the kind words addressed to my work by Dr Fiona MacArthur Purdon (Universidad de Extremadura), Dr iv Terttu Nevalainen (Helsingin yliopisto), Prof. Penelope Gardner-Chloros (Birkbeck College), and Dr Carita Paradis (Lunds universitet). My research has also been aided by the help given by Prof. Jonathan Hope (University of Strathclyde) and Dr Linda Clark (History of Parliament Trust), who kindly lent me some of their works, and by the advice offered by Prof. David Trotter (Prifysgol Aberystwyth/Aberystwyth University) and Dr Anne Sutton (former archivist and historian to the Mercers’ Company) for answering emails sent at unearthly hours. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the members of my MPhil dissertation jury as well. Of these, I must especially thank Dr Rosario Caballero Rodríguez (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha); fortunately, she made me see (in all her frankness) that I had not made the right decisions and that radical changes were needed. In my case, today’s success is definitely the result of yesterday’s defeats. I would not have come this far without the love and understanding shown by my close-knit network of emotional supporters. On this occasion, my first words should be to thank my family (on Earth and in Heaven) and my “in-laws”, for whom la bendita tesis had almost become a personal matter. Gracias de corazón. I address a special thought to my sister Ana Isabel, to my mother Isabel and, in particular, to my father José, who is engaged in a much more important project: the fight for his own life. Next, I express my deep appreciation to my friends, who have never complained (at least, face to face) about my last-minute cancellations and cloistered retreats during weekends. Last but not least at all, I give my heart-felt gratitude to my girlfriend. Isabelle, I thank you for being a shoulder to cry on and am sorry for often venting frustration on you. Je te dois tout. Finally, I appreciate the work carried out by people who are peripheral to this research but without whom I could never have reached the target: the staff in the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and in the Institute of Historical Research, and also my endocrinologists. Needless to say, all shortcomings in this research are entirely my fault. vii Abstract 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. 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. 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 viii 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. 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. xi Table of Contents Declaration . i Acknowledgements . iii Abstract . vii List of Tables, Figures, and Maps . xvii List of Abbreviations . xxi GENERAL INTRODUCTION I.1. RESEARCH RATIONALE . 3 I.1.1. MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY . 3 I.1.2. NEED FOR THE RESEARCH . 6 I.2. THE CORPUS . 12 I.2.1. LINGUISTIC DATA AND THEIR SOURCES . 12 I.2.2. SOCIAL DATA AND THEIR SOURCES . 13 I.3. AIMS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 15 I.4. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER CONTENT . 17 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK II.1. SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS . 23 II.1.1. AN INTERDISCIPLINARY DEVELOPMENT . 23 II.1.2. SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPLICATIONS OF NETWORK ANALYSIS . 25 II.1.2.1. Labov: The socialisation and stratification of linguistic usages . 26 II.1.2.1.1. Labov in Martha’s Vineyard . 27 II.1.2.1.2. Labov in New York City . 29 II.1.2.1.3. Labov and his conception of (socio)linguistics . 31 II.1.2.2. The Milroys: The networking of linguistic usages . 36 II.1.2.2.1. The Milroys in Belfast . 38 II.1.2.2.2. The Milroys and the weakness of bonds . 42 II.1.2.2.3. The Milroys and the integration of social models 46 II.1.3. RECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL NETWORKS . 49 II.1.3.1. The Neogrammarian heritage: Both neglect and inspiration . 49 II.1.3.2. Historical sociolinguistics . 55 II.1.3.2.1. The limitations of historical inquiry . 58 II.1.3.2.1.1. Back-projection . 58 II.1.3.2.1.2.
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