Comparing the incomparable – Exploring the synchronic relevance of historical sociolinguistic insights

Conveners:

Nikola Dobrić (University of Klagenfurt), nikola [dot] dobric [at] aau [dot] at

Bernd Kortmann (University of Freiburg), bernd [dot] kortmann [at] anglistik [dot] uni-freiburg [dot] de

Daniel Schreier (University of Zurich), schreier [at] es [dot] uzh [dot] ch

Robert Millar (University of Aberdeen), r [dot] millar [at] abdn [dot] ac [dot] uk

Mo Gordon (Leiden University), m [dot] s [dot] gordon [at] hum [dot] leidenuniv [dot] nl

Description:

The field of historical sociolinguistics (Stewart, 1968; Montoya et al., 1995; Schreier, 2005; Millar, 2012; Nevalainen, 2015) has shown us that with an appropriate methodological framework (Hernández-Campoy & Conde-Silvestre, 2003) and realistic expectations regarding empirical validity (Gordon, 2005), a more informed understanding of present sociolinguistic findings – from comparative and variationist work to contact, diffusion, and change – can be gained by examining how languages and their speakers have behaved sociolinguistically over extended periods in the past, especially under clearly identifiable social conditions.

This retrospective perspective is now finding resonance in studies of English as a global communicative phenomenon. Most notably, scholars have begun drawing parallels between contemporary English and historically widespread ‘world’, ‘cultural’, or ‘cosmopolitan’ languages such as Sanskrit, Latin, and Classical Arabic (Wright, 2004; Ostler, 2006; Pollock, 2006; König, 2019; Mallette, 2021; Korenjak, 2023; Dobrić et al., 2025; Kortmann et al., forthcoming).

This workshop examines how historical (sociolinguistic) evidence from languages once used for broad cosmopolitan communication can shed light on the factors that enable the emergence and endurance of a global language such as English, as well as on the distinctive patterns shaping its contemporary uses. It thus invites a discussion of the following questions:
1. To what extent can the historical trajectories of ‘world’ languages like Latin or Sanskrit provide useful analogies for the current global spread of English?
2. What methodological risks arise when applying historical linguistic insights to synchronic phenomena in modern languages (and the other way around)?
3. How can historical sociolinguistics contribute to our understanding of present-day language contact and change in English as a global language?
4. Are there identifiable patterns of social stratification, prestige, or institutional support shared by historical ‘cosmopolitan’ languages and modern English?
5. In what ways does the use of English as a ‘global’ lingua franca replicate (or diverge from) the functions fulfilled by languages such as Latin or Classical Arabic in their respective multilingual contexts?
6. What are the uniformitarian implications of viewing English through a retrospective lens for how we model its future evolution?
7. Do diachronic comparisons with languages like Sanskrit or Latin risk downplaying the technological differences of English’s current global spread?
8. What types of historical data (e.g., textual, institutional, demographic) are most promising for informing synchronic models of global English use?
9. How might examining past language ecologies (e.g., multilingual empires, religious communities, academic networks) illuminate the sociolinguistic conditions underpinning today’s global English?
10. How do the historical trajectories and patterns of spread of present-day world languages other than English fare in comparison with world/cosmopolitan languages of the distant past?

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT

For the Thematic Sessions, we invite proposals for individual papers consisting of a 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of discussion. The abstracts should conform to the template found HERE.

References:

Dobrić, N., Korenjak, M., Ruppel, A., Procházka, S., Reinke, K., Wildsmith-Cromarty, R. & Pato, E. (2025a). Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and now English – A case of a special kind of a lingua franca use and status. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics. In publication.
Gordon, M. 2005. Research aims and methodology. In Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, N. Ammon, H. Dittmar, N.J. Mattheier.
Hernández-Campoy, J. M., & Conde-Silvestre, J. C. (Eds.). (2012). The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell.
Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Juan Camilo Silvestre (eds.). 2003. The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing.
König, D. G. (Ed.). (2019). Latin and Arabic: Entangled histories. Heidelberg University Publishing.
Kortmann, B. et al. (forthcoming; 2026). The spread of world languages.
Mallette, K. (2021). Lives of the great languages: Arabic and Latin in the medieval Mediterranean. University of Chicago Press.
Millar, R. M. (2012). English historical sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press.
Montoya, B., Hernández, M. R., & Gimeno, F. (1995). Historical sociolinguistics: A current trend of research. Catalan Review, 9(2), 291–315.
Nevalainen, T. (2015). What are historical sociolinguistics? Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 1(1).
Ostler, N. (2006). Empires of the word: A language history of the world. Harper Perennial.
P. Trudgill (eds), 955–965 Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Pollock, S. (2006). The language of the gods in the world of men: Sanskrit, culture, and power in premodern India. University of California Press.
Schreier, D. (2025). English sociolinguistics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, W. A. (1968). A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the sociology of language (pp. 531–545).
Wright, R. (2004). Latin and English as world languages. English Today, 20(4), 3–19.