Visual multilingualism. A socio-semiotic approach to script choice in late antique documentary papyri

Start - End 
2019 - 2023 (ongoing)
Type 
Department(s) 
Department of Linguistics
Research Period 
Additional tags 
Papyrology

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Abstract

The PhD project "Visual Multilingualism: A Socio-semiotic Approach to Script Choice in Late Antique Documentary Papyri" is part of the ERC-funded project "Everyday writing in Graeco-Roman and late antique Egypt (I – VIII AD). A socio-semiotic study of communicative variation" (EVWRIT). It focuses on the study of visual aspects of multilingual phenomena in non-literary papyri of late antiquity, and particularly phenomena related to script choice (e.g. digraphia, transliteration). This project uses theoretical concepts and methods from socio-semiotics, sociolinguistics, and multilingual/language contact studies. Sources include papyrological evidence in Greek, Latin, and Coptic, drawn from the EVWRIT database. This research is facilitated by the creation of annotation tools (e.g. character recognition tool) specifically adjusted to the needs of studying the aforementioned multilingual phenomena, while respecting historical and papyrological characteristics and particularities of the texts. The general objective of the project is to relate these writing (and eventually visual) choices to their socio-historical environment and interpret their functions, in order to obtain a better understanding of everyday multilingual communication and practices in Egyptian antiquity.

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Phd Student(s)