EUROTALES aims to establish a new integrated approach to researching and representing the linguistic heritage of Europe as it is preserved and echoes through time and place. Language studies necessarily approach languages individually, both diachronically and synchronically, analysing standards, dialects and variations. EUROTALES departs from a monolingual perspective, seeking to map the complex and intertwined linguistic culture of the continent taking into account the linguistic identities, the vestiges and memories of languages in individuals, and the traces of language on material objects and places.
Languages change according to peoples, contexts and circumstances, helping to define identities and build communities. Negotiated though use, languages coexist in individuals and places as a direct product of social relationships and territorial specificity. No community is ever monolingual: people move and their speech and written cultures are shaped mostly through contact, exchange but also clash and confrontation.
We plan to build a research hub collecting linguistic data relating to 1. Individuals (how many languages live in any one individual) 2. Written culture (mother tongues and written languages in time and place); 3. Objects (how intangible linguistic heritage is transmitted and accounted for by material objects and in the public space).
This research, combined with a workshop to process the data, feeds into EUROTALES - A Museum of the Voices of Europe, a permanent exhibition space at Marco Polo, Sapienza, where our Department and the Sapienza Language Centre are based. The Department is building this space in the context of our Public Engagement mission, the Casa delle Lingue, to disseminate our work online and on site.
Our aim is to give continuous and open access to our findings to the wider community of scholars and to the general public as a way to engage and involve the community into retrieving its heritage.
