The standardization of specialized discourse in early modern English: the role of Latin

In the early modern era, the increasing connection between different geographical areas and cultures resulted in the exchange of commodities and ideas; this was particularly stimulating for the English language which was in its path towards standardization. Two historical phenomena occasioned this social necessity: merchants exchanged money and turned out to be a new leading and prestigious figure – this consequently resulted in a greater social mobility and in the middle class raising its power in the field of politics -; and the great modern corporations, e.g., the British East India Company, as a powerful instrument of trade and as a representative example of a commercial network going beyond the domestic economy. Against this backdrop, new fields of knowledge entered a process of linguistic systematization: Latin lost its currency as a lingua franca for learned discourse, and English revealed all its deficiencies as a vehicle for scientific communication. In this sense, the increasing globalization during the Renaissance appears as crucial to shed some light on the lexeme formation in early modern specialized discourse. This paper will address the role of Latin in the enrichment of the English vernacular which lacked both prestige and vocabulary to deal with the widening range of functions as a new standard. Particular reference will be devoted to the lexical resources created for these new “terms of art”, i.e., the most well-known hard word dictionaries which were compiled to encourage a definite codification of English.