Call for Papers for a series of Sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds 2027 (Special Strand: Communities)

An English chronicler writes that the French king seeks to eradicate the Flemish language in the city of Damme; Georgian and Armenian are implemented as liturgical languages in the Orthodox Church; Buddhist texts are translated into multiple languages; Arabic-Latin treaties reveal substantial differences between the two languages to appeal to their respective communities. While geographically and chronologically disparate, these cases have one thing in common: they occur in settings characterised by a multitude of languages, and this multilingualism is used to shape communities. The Middle Ages were an inherently multilingual period that was both spatially and socially characterised by a diversity of languages that entailed a wide range of cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal contacts. This diversity of languages is evident in a wide variety of sources, from charters to cookbooks, from graffiti to saints’ lives, from scientific treatises to chronicles, and many others.

Yet not all languages held the same status in their respective societies. This status was not fixed and could fluctuate according to social, political, and religious circumstances. While some languages were outlawed, others could be elevated to the status of sacred. Others became the language of power, of legal practice, or of knowledge. Medieval multilingualism was therefore constantly negotiated. In this context, the choice of a language was used to define, create, and exclude communities.

Such processes of language negotiation are at the core of the proposed sessions. By bringing together papers from different linguistic, political, and legal contexts in the Global Middle Ages, these sessions aim to explore the ways in which language contributed to the creation of communities through legal status, narrative constructions, and political decisions by secular and religious authorities, together with their socio-economic ramifications.

If you want to participate, please send a short abstract by 7 September 2026 to Robert.friedrich@lmu.de. Submissions may address one or more of the following topics; further relevant topics are also welcome.

– Language and Power
How was language used as an instrument of power, for example through limiting participation by restricting the language permitted, for example during court procedures?
Were there dedicated ‘language politics’, for example in post-conquest settings?
How did the choice of language reflect power dynamics, or was it used explicitly to appear as part of a certain community?

– Language and Religion
How did the languages of liturgy, preaching, and theology shape communities of the faithful and the development of religious traditions?

– Narratives of linguistic communities
How do narrative sources use mentions and discussions of language and linguistic differences to create or dismiss communities?
How are these narratives connected to the construction of identities centred on language?
How were speakers of certain languages stereotyped, revered, or mocked in narrative sources?
Did diaspora groups use language narratives to shape their identity?

– Communities of Language Learning
How does language learning material reflect linguistic communities and their need to learn a specific language?
Who produced language manuals and glossaries, and in what contexts?
What does this tell us about the sociolinguistic structure of this particular society?

– Translation and Knowledge
How did translations or translation movements allow for the creation of new communities of knowledge?
How did the choice of language for a text included or excluded certain actors from access to knowledge and participation in the scientific community?

Kontakt : robert.friedrich@lmu.de

Source : H-Soz-Kult