MetaLing Corpus: Creating a corpus of English linguistics metalanguage from the 16th to the 18th century
Project Our project studies the English metalanguage that was created to analyse and compare, appraise and classify, teach and learn the vernacular languages of Europe between 1500 and 1700, i.e. before the development of comparative philology and the institutionalisation of linguistics as an academic discipline. To this end, we will build a corpus of texts dedicated to or including observations on languages, which, in the period under review, are to be found in works with a large variety of aims and fields. Through archival research and corpus compilation, the project aims to assess the genres and text-types involved in the circulation of linguistic knowledge, and thus throw light onto unconventional texts and voices besides the major works and figures on which scholarship has naturally concentrated. The project will involve the analysis of the terminology, discursive strategies and descriptive metaphors used to discuss language in diachronic perspective.
