Pre-Modern Seminar No 38: Kaidi Kriisa

On Monday December 8th Kaidi Kriisa from the University of Tartu will give a talk called:

“The rise of the vernaculars in the 17th century University of Dorpat - code-switching in academic writings”

The seminar will take place in the library of Skandinavistika (Ülikooli 17, 3rd floor, room 305) at 18.15.
 

Kaidi has sent us a short presentation of her lecture:

“For scholars in Europe especially, the early modern period is  recognized as an era when Latin held a dominant position in almost each and every sphere of the academic world, being intimately involved in the life of an educated man. The use of Lingua Latina was a test of the erudition and wisdom of a person, and it was customary that both the language of communication and of learning of intellectuals was to a great extent Latin-based. In this respect, the 17th century Academy of Tartu (Dorpat) was no exception.

When analysing the 17th century academic writings of the University of Tartu from the aspect of historical language change, one can see that code-switching was a rather often used practice in the printed materials, e.g. disputations, orations, dissertations as well as within different kinds of letters.

As a counterweight to printed material where Latin was used as the dominant (matrix) language, the linguistic situation in the letters was in most cases just the opposite -  as a matrix language some vernaculars, e.g. Swedish or German were used and Latin was more or less  used as the second (embedded) language.

In this presentation I will give an overview of code-switching (language change) as a discipline that was a rather often used practice in the 17th century Dorpat University’s academic material, both in manuscripts (i.e. personal letters and their ’sub-genres’) and printed dissertations, disputations and orations. On the basis of printed material, I will show which vernaculars (and how) were preferred to be mixed with Latin the most on the level of different  personal and faculties’ writings.“

Everybody is welcome!