Shaping Letters, Shaping Communities: Multilingualism and Linguistic Practice in the Late Antique Near East and Egypt

Shaping Letters, Shaping Communities: Multilingualism and Linguistic Practice in the Late Antique Near East and Egypt PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004682333
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The volume explores linguistic practices and choices in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean. It investigates how linguistic diversity and change influenced the social dimension of human interaction, affected group dynamics, the expression and negotiation of various communal identities, such as professional groups of mosaic-makers, stonecutters, or their supervisors in North Syria, bilingual monastic communities in Palestine, elusive producers of Coptic ritual texts in Egypt, or Jewish communities in Dura Europos and Palmyra. The key question is: what do we learn about social groups and human individuals by studying their multilingualism and language practices reflected in epigraphic and other written sources?

Shaping Letters, Shaping Communities: Multilingualism and Linguistic Practice in the Late Antique Near East and Egypt

Shaping Letters, Shaping Communities: Multilingualism and Linguistic Practice in the Late Antique Near East and Egypt PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004682333
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book

Book Description
The volume explores linguistic practices and choices in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean. It investigates how linguistic diversity and change influenced the social dimension of human interaction, affected group dynamics, the expression and negotiation of various communal identities, such as professional groups of mosaic-makers, stonecutters, or their supervisors in North Syria, bilingual monastic communities in Palestine, elusive producers of Coptic ritual texts in Egypt, or Jewish communities in Dura Europos and Palmyra. The key question is: what do we learn about social groups and human individuals by studying their multilingualism and language practices reflected in epigraphic and other written sources?

The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids

The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids PDF Author: Arietta Papaconstantinou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
For over a millennium and a half, Egypt was home to at least two commonly used languages of communication. Although this situation is by no means exceptional in the ancient and medieval worlds, the wealth of documentary sources preserved by Egypt's papyri makes the country a privileged observation ground for the study of ancient multilingualism. One of the greatest contributions of papyri to this subject is that they capture more linguistic registers than other ancient and medieval sources, since they range from very private documents not meant by their author to be read by future generations, to official documents produced by the administration, which are preserved in their original form. This collection of essays aims to make this wealth better known, as well as to give a diachronic view of multilingual practices in Egypt from the arrival of the Greeks as a political force in the country with Alexander the Great, to the beginnings of Abbasid rule when Greek, and slowly also Coptic, receded from the documentary record. The first section of the book gives an overview of the documentary sources for this subject, which for ancient history standards are very rich and as yet under-exploited. The second part contains several case studies from different periods that deal with language use in contexts of varying breadth and scope, from its the ritual use in magic or the liturgy to private letters and state administration.

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts PDF Author: Louis C. Jonker
Publisher: African Sun Media
ISBN: 1991201168
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

Bilingualism in Ancient Society

Bilingualism in Ancient Society PDF Author: James Noel Adams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199245062
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Bilingualism has seen an explosion of work in recent years. This volume introduces classicists, ancient historians and other scholars interested in sociolinguistic research into evidence of bilingualism in the ancient Mediterranean.

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East PDF Author: Trevor Bryce
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134575866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
From the 17th to the 12th centuries BCE, the five Great Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Hatti (the kingdom of the Hittites), Mitanni and Assyria ruled over vast, complex territories. One of the secrets to their control was frequent communication by letter.

The Language of Roman Letters

The Language of Roman Letters PDF Author: Olivia Elder
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108727105
Category : Code switching (Linguistics)
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Letters and Communities

Letters and Communities PDF Author: Paola Ceccarelli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192526235
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The writing of letters often evokes associations of a single author and a single addressee, who share in the exchange of intimate thoughts across distances of space and time. This model underwrites such iconic notions as the letter representing an 'image of the soul of the author' or constituting 'one half of a dialogue'. However justified this conception of letter-writing may be in particular instances, it tends to marginalize a range of issues that were central to epistolary communication in the ancient world and have yet to receive sustained and systematic investigation. In particular, it overlooks the fact that letters frequently presuppose and were designed to reinforce communities-or, indeed, to constitute them in the first place. This volume explores the interrelation of letters and communities in the ancient world, examining how epistolary communication aided in the construction and cultivation of group-identities and communities, whether social, political, religious, ethnic, or philosophical. A theoretically informed Introduction establishes the interface of epistolary discourse and group formation as a vital but hitherto neglected area of research, and is followed by thirteen case studies offering multi-disciplinary perspectives from four key cultural configurations: Greece, Rome, Judaism, and Christianity. The first part opens the volume with two chapters on the theory and practice of epistolary communication that focus on ancient epistolary theory and the unavoidable presence of a letter-carrier who introduces a communal aspect into any correspondence, while the second comprises five chapters that explore configurations of power and epistolary communication in the Greek and Roman worlds, from the archaic period to the end of the Hellenistic age. Five chapters on letters and communities in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity follow in the third, part before the volume concludes with an envoi examining the trans-historical, or indeed timeless, philosophical community Seneca the Younger construes in his Letters to Lucilius.

Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds

Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds PDF Author: Alex Mullen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013860
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This book employs new interdisciplinary approaches to understand multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman worlds, East and West, Classical and medieval.

LETTERS AND COMMUNITIES.

LETTERS AND COMMUNITIES. PDF Author: CECCARELLI ET AL (EDS)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191842405
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800

Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800 PDF Author: Roger Bagnall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
More than three hundred letters written in Greek and Egyptian by women in Egypt in the millennium from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest survive on papyrus and pottery. Written by women from various walks of life, they shed light on critical social aspects of life in Egypt after the pharaohs. Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore collect the best preserved letters in translation and set them in their paleographic, linguistic, social, and economic contexts. The authors' analysis suggests that women's habits, interests, and means of expression were a product more of their social and economic standing than of specifically gender-related concerns or behavior. They present theoretical discussions about the handwriting and language of the letters, the education and culture of the writers' everyday concerns and occupations. Numerous illustrations display the varieties of handwriting.