The Vernacular and Its Consequences

Abstract

AbstractThe writings produced in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean in the first millennium bc document how many vernaculars, each with its own script, were used simultaneously and that the region was characterized by its multilingualism (a feature true throughout its history). The interactions with the cosmopolitan tradition preserved by a succession of empires (Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian) show a range of attitudes that can be analyzed through a postcolonial lens as forms of resistance. For most genres of writing the switch to the vernacular required choices not only of language and script but also of the writing tools. The agents in the movement to write vernaculars were members of the courts, not the wider population, which refutes the commonly accepted idea that the alphabet triumphed in writing because it did not require a palace infrastructure to be taught. The multilingualism that often appears in inscriptions also challenges the notion that vernaculars were expressions of national identities. The rise of vernaculars in writing needs to be seen within the context of local elites in dialogue with the empires and the cosmopolitan literate tradition. Their emergence in alphabetic scripts had as consequence, albeit unintended, that the focus on the written text in epistemology was replaced by one that investigated physical reality instead.