Whose Language? Whose DH? Towards a taxonomy of definitional elusiveness in the digital humanities

Abstract

This article responds to the current interventions regarding spatio- and linguistic diversity in the digital humanities (DHs). Previous work has focused on the practitioners of DHs themselves, the diversity of projects, the geographical diversity of peoples and places which such projects represent, and others. Some literature has considered multilingual DH, whether a non-Anglophone DH is possible, or a DH ‘accent’. This article pushes these boundaries further by considering forms of historical linguistic hybridity for languages, language varieties, and groups of people that are no longer extant. It considers one text in particular, the Dictionnaire de la langue franque, to show that, although ‘mixed’ languages are the norm in all societies, forms of hybridity are often left by the wayside in favour of increasing heterogeneity. This observation, in turn, leads to a taxonomy of definitional elusiveness.