James I and the Rise of Codeswitching Diplomacy in Thirteenth-Century Catalonia

Beginning in 1259, rebel nobles in Catalonia and King James I (1213-1276) began to compose defiance letters to each other in their shared vernacular, Catalan. Close examination of these documents using theoretical frameworks from linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics suggests that both parties employed the vernacular to augment the impact of their invective messages. Defiance letters already transmitted a verbal attack when delivered in the high-prestige language (Latin). These were declarations of war in which vassals disavowed their lords and reproached them with accusations and threats or vice versa. Transmitting them in the spoken, lower-prestige register (Catalan), however, amplified their effect by providing an unexpected break in protocol. It allowed the feuding parties to aggravate their threats and accusations by inflicting a blow in decorum alongside their declarations of war. Once their conflict ended, both parties switched back to writing to each other in Latin to signal a return to normality.