Olga Timofeeva

Lexical Loans and Their Diffusion in Old English: of ‘gospels’, ‘martyrs’, and ‘teachers’

ABSTRACT The study of borrowed vocabulary and language contact in the Old English period is technically problematic in many ways. Surviving texts give us few clues as to how loans functioned outside the clerical communities, what their regional and register distributions were, and to what extent written sources reflect the circulation of loans in spoken language. This may suggest that a descriptive catalogue of lexical loans is the only approach applicable to the Old English material. This paper, however, aims at an inferential analysis of several loans from Latin and Greek in the religious and educational domain based on contemporary approaches to linguistic innovation, diffusion and change, and the wider cultural context that would have ensured their currency and dissemination – social networks provided by medieval schools and monasteries, and the ecclesiastical community at large. Using a select body of educated loans, it argues that strong ties within monastic communities would generally have prevented contact-induced lexical change from spreading outside the monasteries. Yet the role of individual innovators with both clerical and non-clerical ties and early adopters with elementary Latin proficiency (parish priests) in diffusion of change should not be underestimated.

Alfredian Press on the Vikings A Critical Discourse Approach to Outgroup Construction

The aim of this paper is to investigate discourse strategies of outgroup construction in the Alfredian period (late ninth century), by using critical discourse analysis and testing its relevance for the Anglo-Saxon data. The study focuses on the Viking outgroup and its presentation in the texts of the period. The analysis also tackles earlier and later sources containing the episodes of the first encounter with the unwelcome “Other” to trace typological features of outgroup construction in medieval political discourse. The genres that are taken into account are historical writings and legislation in Anglo-Latin and Old English. It is postulated that the Alfredian texts are commissioned by the political elite—the West Saxon kingship—and produced by the symbolic elite—writers, chroniclers, copyists, the clergy more generally, with the Alfredian circle being reconstructed as a “Community of Practice” with a distinct political, cultural, and discourse agenda. The Viking raids of the period provide a “bid for counter-power,” to which the elites have to react both militarily and ideologically. The ideologies of the Anglo-Saxon elites are analyzed at the discourse level, concentrating on the strategies of outgroup derogation, e.g., criminalization of the Vikings in the chronicles. It is concluded that the chronicles can be analyzed as analogous to modern press, that they were produced and circulated to shape “public opinion” of politically and economically prominent social groups.

The Viking outgroup in early medieval English chronicles

Abstract This paper relates diachronic change in discourse strategies of the Viking-age historical writing to political changes of the period and to communities of practice that produce these histories and chronicles. It examines the labels and stereotypes applied to the Vikings and establishes their sources and evolution by applying a fourfold chronological division of historical sources from around 800 to 1200 (based on the political developments within Anglo-Saxon history and on the manuscript history of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). The data for the study come from both Old English and Anglo-Latin chronicles. The results are interpreted in terms of critical discourse analysis. It is demonstrated that the chroniclers employ strategies of dissimilation exploiting the notion of illegitimacy and criminality of the Viking outgroup. These strategies change over time, depending on the political situation (raiding vs. settlement vs. reconquest period) and communities of practice involved in the maintenance and dissemination of a particular political discourse.

Bide Nu Æt Gode Þæt Ic Grecisc Cunne: Attitudes to Greek and the Greeks in the Anglo-Saxon Period

Abstract The Greeks were one of those outgroups to whom the Anglo-Saxons had reasons to look up to, because of the antiquity of their culture and the sanctity of their language, along those of the Hebrews and the Romans. Yet as a language Greek was practically unknown for most of the Anglo-Saxon period and contact with its native speakers and country extremely limited. Nevertheless, references to the Greeks and their language are not uncommon in the Anglo-Saxon sources (both Latin and vernacular), as a little less than 200 occurrences in the Dictionary of Old English (s.v. grecisc) testify. This paper uses these data, supplementing them with searches in the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Brepolis Library of Latin Texts - Series A, monumenta.ch and Medieval Latin from Anglo-Saxon Sources, and analyses lexical and syntactic strategies of the Greek outgroup construction in Anglo-Saxon texts. It looks at lexemes denoting ‘Greek’ and their derivatives in Anglo-Latin and Old English, examines their collocates and gleans information on attitudes towards Greek and the Greeks, and on membership claims indexed by Latin-Greek or English-Greek code-switching, by at the same time trying to establish parallels and influences between the two high registers of the Anglo-Saxon period.