TY  - BOOK
AU  - Beinhoff,Bettina
AU  - Berg,Ivar
AU  - Brown,Josh
AU  - Carnicero,José Miguel Alcolado
AU  - Kaislaniemi,Samuli
AU  - Kühnert,Henrike
AU  - Nesse,Agnete
AU  - Outhwaite,Ben
AU  - Selbach,Rachel
AU  - Stenroos,Merja
AU  - Tiddeman,Megan
AU  - Wagner,Esther-Miriam
AU  - Wright,Laura
TI  - Merchants of Innovation: The Languages of Traders 
T2  - Studies in Language Change [SLC] ,
SN  - 9781501511608
AV  - P120.M47 M47 2017
U1  - 418.0071 23
PY  - 2017///]
CY  - Berlin, Boston
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
KW  - Jargon (Terminology)
KW  - Language and languages
KW  - Study and teaching
KW  - Merchants
KW  - Language
KW  - History
KW  - Multicultural education
KW  - Multilingualism
KW  - Social aspects
KW  - Sprachwandel
KW  - LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Historical Linguistics
KW  - Language Change and Variation
KW  - Registers
N1  - Frontmatter --; Acknowledgements --; Contents --; I. Introduction --; 1. Merchants of Innovation: the languages of traders --; II. Literacy of traders and their agency as linguistic trendsetters --; 2. Like the coins when currencies are combined: contextualizing the written language of fifteenth-century English merchants --; 3. Bridges of innovation and change: the English language around the networks of the Mercery of London --; 4. The socio-linguistics of Judaeo-Arabic mercantile writing --; III. Code-switching, loanwords and multilingualism --; 5. Business writing in early sixteenth-century Norway --; 6. Kiss Me Quick: on the naming of commodities in Britain, 1650 to the First World War --; 7. The early English East India Company as a community of practice: evidence of multilingualism --; 8. Language choice in forming an identity: linguistic innovations by German traders in Bergen --; 9. From the synagogue to the market square: cardinal numbers in Older Yiddish --; IV. Mercantile linguistic communities --; 10. Early Anglo-Italian contact: new loanword evidence from two mercantile sources, 1440–1451 --; 11. Multilingual merchants: the trade network of the 14th century Tuscan merchant Francesco di Marco Datini --; 12. On a famous lacuna: Lingua Franca the Mediterranean trade pidgin? --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - Traders around the world use particular spoken argots, to guard commercial secrets or to cement their identity as members of a certain group. The written registers of traders, too, in correspondence and other commercial texts show significant differences from the language used in official, legal or private writing. This volume suggests a clear cross-linguistic tendency that mercantile writing displays a greater degree of language mixing, code-switching and linguistic innovations, and, by setting precedents, promote language change. This interdisciplinary volume aims to place the traders' languages within a wider sociolinguistic context. Questions addressed include: What differences can be observed between mercantile registers and those of court or legal scribes? Do the traders' texts show the early emergence of features that take longer to permeate into the 'higher' varieties of the same language? Do they anticipate language change in the standard register or influence it by setting linguistic precedents? What sets traders' letters apart from private correspondence and other 'low' registers? The book will also examine bilingualism, semi-bilingualism, reasons for code-switching and the choice of particular languages over others in commercial correspondence
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501503542
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781501503542
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781501503542/original
ER  -