The Language of Czech Popular Broadside Ballads: Revisiting the Low

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to the language of Czech broadside ballads. The authors here examine the opinions about the “lowly” language of broadside ballads that have prevailed among Czech linguists and literary scholars during the twentieth century. They claim that the language of broadside ballads does not differ substantially from that of other texts, even of the elite, from the same era. However, they do find substantial linguistic differences when comparing older printed ballads (of the seventeenth century) and newer ones (of the eighteenth century) as well as religious and secular broadside ballads.