The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

Perhaps the most problematic issue for historical methodology is that language use has
become a potentially central factor in the construction of some modern ethnicities, meaning
that it can carry political connotations. Indeed, language use can often be one of the
principal, if not sole, characteristic features that differentiates a group identity between „us‟
and „them‟ (Edwards 1985; Gudykunst 1988; Fishman 1999). In many ways, this has always
been the case throughout human history. In a story that has counterparts in many other
cultures, for example, the Polish Duke Łokietek, upon re-taking the city of Kraków from the
Germans in 1312, relied on a shibboleth to confirm Polish identity, forcing inhabitants to
quote Polish tongue twisters. Those who could not do so adequately were beheaded
(Richmond 1995: 62). Nevertheless, whilst language use might have always been an
important factor behind historical identity, the issue of correct language standards, and
especially national language planning, is a relatively modern phenomenon.
The danger behind this is that language use is often contextually important to modern
researchers, and since modern typologies are normally imposed on ancient perceptions,
historians can be guilty of what has been termed the „structuralist fallacy‟, or “the assumption
that if there happens to exist now a single name for a linguistic state, in the past there must
have existed then a complete single language system which that name is used to refer to”
(Wright 1999: 26). This constitutes a presumption that the issues which preoccupy modern
scholars must have some reflection in the preoccupations of their historical subjects. As
Stock (1990) remarked: “in pushing Weltanschauung back into the Middle Ages, students
often made the assumption that the term society in a medieval content corresponds to what
we know as „industrial‟ or „American‟ society” (ibid.: 22). Lucian, amongst many other
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