Linguists recognize that language plays many roles: it is, among other things, a system of communication, a social institution, and a medium of ethnic and cultural identity. These fundamental uses of language have been recognized since antiquity but it is only recently that the sociolinguistic issues have been afforded serious concernand subjected to the detailed analysis that has marked the more formal aspects of the scientific study of human language. But in the Homeric epics we see already an interest in these concerns in the awareness of multilingualism, of the problems in communication that can result from the lack of bilingualism where it is needed, and of ethnic identification along linguistic lines.
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Teffeteller, A. (2008). Linguistic Science and Script Technology: The Homeric Evidence. In: Paipetis, S.A. (eds) Science and Technology in Homeric Epics. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8784-4_40
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