Articles

Code-switching in Early Modern Greek disputations

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Abstract

This paper focuses on Greek–Latin code-switching inHumanist Greek disputations, a rare form within the genre in Europe between theearly seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. It begins with a brief overviewof the corpus and the dynamics of the use of the two ancient languages in it.This is followed by a case-study of the introduction of Greek as an academiccode language in the disputations of Johannes Steuber of Giessen. The finalpart of the paper discusses the functions of short inserted sentences in Latin(or other languages) into the Greek disputations. The paper has three aims:first, to show how code-switching works in cases where the main language of thetext is Greek and not Latin; second, to show how Greek–Latin code-switching orLatin insertions anchor the disputations in academic (Latin) disputationpractice; and third, to determine whether Greek–Latin code-switching practicessupport the hypothesis that Greek disputations arose as an attempt to establishGreek in a function as an alternative academic language to Latin.

Keywords: Greek-Latin code-switching, Early modern universities, Humanist Greek, disputations

How to Cite:

Päll, J., (2025) “Code-switching in Early Modern Greek disputations”, Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures 11. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/jolcel.89652