"Multilingualism, Linguae Francae and the Global History of Concepts".

Dear Participants

The workshop is jointly organized by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology. The venue is The Norwegian Institute at Athens.

In the course of the project "The Globalization of Knowledge and its Consequences", as initiated by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the importance of language as the vehicle by which conceptual systems diffuse globally through history has become evident. Thus a sub-project, "Multilingualism, Linguae Francae and the Global History of Religious and Scientific Concepts", has been established to support the main project of "The Globalization of Knowledge and Its Consequences".

In periods when knowledge and conceptual systems diffuse to a high degree, we find that translation activities are particularly intense, and that the question what texts and language "mean" has a particular importance in the perspective of communicating various sorts of knowledge. We also find that such periods of communication between languages and cultures often are very innovative.

The processes governing such diffusion of conceptual systems can be studied in how these systems are transposed from one language to another, from the original language where the concepts are conceived, to receiving languages where the concepts are reformulated in a new linguistic medium and cultural setting. The interrelations between linguae francae, in which linguistic concepts most often get their authority, and the receiving languages, where concepts are reformulated as loan-words and loan-translations, are intricate and pose many interesting semiological and semantic questions, as well as questions of conceptual and cultural sciences.

The purpose of the workshop is to present historically important case studies of multilingualism as interrelated to various linguae francae in an attempt to understand the historical processes of diffusion of ideas through various aspects of language, written or oral, standardized or non-standardized, trade-related, religious, scientific or diplomatic. It is our hope that the study of such multilingual situations will give us a better understanding of the global and diachronic diffusion of knowledge, concepts and ideas.

We intend to produce a book on the topic, with an accompanying website, as a result of the meeting. The workshop itself will be held at the Norwegian Institute at Athens in March 2009, and we would like to invite you to participate in the workshop, as well as contribute to the book.

We have envisaged the following list of multilingual/linguae francae situations to be described, which we consider important for the processes of diffusion of knowledge and global cultural communication:

1. The Rosetta stones: Why were they made?2. Sumerian as a lingua franca and a contributor of conceptual systems.3. Lexicography and standardization in the ancient Middle East.4. Akkadian as a lingua franca, heir of Sumerian, and contributor of conceptual systems to a great number of languages in the ancient Middle East. The role of a common writing technology and scribes.5. The role of Egyptian and Phoenician.6. Aramaic as a lingua franca and medium of communication between the East and the West during the Persian empires.7. The role of Greek as a lingua franca before and after Alexander the Great.

8. The multilingualism of Emperor Ashoka and the contacts between India and the West.9. Multilingualisms along the Silk Road.10. Sanskrit as a formal lingua franca and its cultural and conceptual impact on various languages in the Far East.11. Latin as a lingua franca: Its influence on Western European languages.12. Greek as a lingua franca: Its influence on the Middle East and Eastern Europe.13. The translations of Greek into Arabic and the creation of an Arabic philosophical and scientific terminology.14. Religion as a space for diffusion of concepts: The case of Manicheism.15. Religion as a space for diffusion of concepts: The case of Buddhism.16. Religion as a space for diffusion of concepts: The case of Christianity.17. Religion as a space for diffusion of concepts: The case of Islam.18. Chinese as the political, philosophical and scientific language of East Asia.19. Modern linguae francae: Italian, French.20. The role of German as a scientific language, its creation from the classical background and its influence in modern science.21. The role of Russian as a lingua franca in Eastern Europe.22. English as the present dominating lingua franca and its overwhelming influence on all aspects of most modern languages.23. The creation of Western terminology in East Asian languages in the 19th Century.24. Multilingualism and linguae francae in Africa.25. Multilingualism and linguae francae in the Americas, before and after Columbus.26. Languages and metalanguages.27. Standardized and non-standardized multilingualisms.28. Multilingualism and the creation of writing technology.

The list is not final, and we invite you to complete it with topics which have been left out. The list may, though, be prolonged almost ad infinitum, so it is important that we concentrate on representative cases. We would like to publish a book on the topic, but it may be difficult to cover all these topics in one workshop. We however ask you to give presentations which may be drafts for chapters of such a book, not necessarily from the list, but on a topic which you see as relevant for describing the processes of multilingualism and linguae francae.

Malcolm Hyman Jens Braarvig.