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1 results

  • 3 - Language Shift, Attitudes and Management in the Roman West

  • Edited by Aneta Pavlenko, University of York
  • Book:
    Multilingualism and History
    Published online:
    20 April 2023
    Print publication:
    27 April 2023, pp 71-89

  • Summary

    To explain Latinization of the Roman West, scholars have long searched for evidence of a language policy mandating the use of Latin. They have found none under the Principate. The Roman centre was not interested in policies involving all its subjects, and elite Romans were uninterested in languages other than Latin and Greek and had no concerns about their use, as long as the Empire’s functioning remained intact. Indeed, it is not clear that any such policy would have made much sense for provincials in illiterate and translingual environments. However, though there may not have been an Empire-wide policy of Latinization, there were certainly language ideologies and multiple narrowly focused facets of language management concerning the use of Latin and Greek in the running of the Empire.