Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing and the French Revolution. One theme is the relation between languages and communities and the place of language as a way of identifying others, as well as a symbol of one"s own identity. A second, linked theme is that of competition: between Latin and the vernaculars, different vernaculars, dominant and subordinate, and different varieties of the same vernacular.