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oa Het meertalige familiearchief als microkosmos: taalkeuze en taalshift binnen de Leidse hugenotenfamilie Luzac (1691–1866)
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Taal en Tongval, Volume 76, Issue 2, Dec 2024, p. 172 - 198
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- 01 Dec 2024
Abstract
The multilingual family archive as a microcosm: language choice and language shift within the Leiden Huguenot Luzac family (1691–1866)
This paper investigates the phenomena of language choice and language shift in the extensive archives of the Luzac family, a family of Huguenot migrants based in the Dutch city of Leiden. Spanning the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the archival material is examined from two complementary angles in order to gain insights into the historical multilingualism of the Northern Netherlands. We first present a macrolevel analysis of the family archives in their entirety, diachronically and across domains. We then take a more qualitative, micro-level perspective on the private family correspondence of three generations. Despite some methodological challenges, the study of a family archive as a multilingual ‘microcosm’ proves to be a fruitful approach to investigate the linguistic choices of originally French(-speaking) migrants in a historically Dutch(-speaking) environment. More generally, this case study demonstrates the dynamics and the complexity of individual and societal multilingualism, language choice and language shift.