“I ask Your Excellency most humbly to pardon me for writing in a foreign language”: French in Russian and Swedish internal diplomatic correspondence, c. 1720s-1740s
To fully comprehend the rise of French as a “professional” language within European diplomacy in the century following the Peace of Westphalia, a comprehensive examination of diplomatic communications, both external and internal, is necessary. The essay explores the role of French in internal diplom...
में बचाया:
| में प्रकाशित: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/chreecc, |
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| मुख्य लेखकों: | , |
| स्वरूप: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| भाषा: | Anglais |
| प्रकाशित: |
Cahiers d’histoire russe, est-européenne, caucasienne et centrasiatique
2024
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| ऑनलाइन पहुंच: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| सारांश: | To fully comprehend the rise of French as a “professional” language within European diplomacy in the century following the Peace of Westphalia, a comprehensive examination of diplomatic communications, both external and internal, is necessary. The essay explores the role of French in internal diplomatic correspondence, a topic far less studied than the language’s role in external exchanges. By comparing sources from Russian and Swedish archives, dating roughly from the time frame between the 1720s and the 1740s, we highlight the various reasons why French was used alongside the domestic languages: on the one hand, for a range of pragmatic reasons connected to the francophone working milieus of diplomats; on the other, there was a need for an informal language choice enabling diplomats to code-switch between Russian/Swedish and French. In the latter case, French was used to distinguish different contents or different levels of formality. This internal use of French, we argue, should be distinguished from the use of French in external diplomatic correspondence, where it was progressively becoming a standard medium of diplomatic communication, replacing, not complementing, other languages. |
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