Vernacular Languages

Abstract

Several debates existed vis-à-vis vernacular languages, in various parts of Europe, from the fourteenth to sixteenth century. Those languages underwent a process of progressive regularization, a limitation of the dialectal variety, and the incorporation of new uses and registers, especially in those fields of the literate world that had retained Latin during the Middle Ages. The vindication and dignification of vernacular languages involved a slow but inexorable process of substitution of Latin in the learned arena, which entailed a redistribution of cultural prestige, a change in discursive models, and also the emergence of new agents. Nonetheless, this substitution did not occur in all languages in the same way or at the same rate.