With every important and valued organisation of people, must come an equally valuable and impressive shield. Technically, in line with the practice of heraldry, it might be interesting to note a shield is known as an escutcheon. It should represent the beliefs, principles, aims or ideals of the group of people, and best so succinctly and legibly. It will also inevitably use pictographic representations as symbolism in order to portray these beliefs or ideals. Using these ideas about what a shield is, I have attempted to create one for our degree scheme; MLang: Modern Languages and Cultures. Herein I shall attempt to explain what it means and why I chose to do what I did with it.
In a direct, cross-comparison between the MLang shield and the shield for Lancaster University, one can quite plainly see that there are certainly quite visible similarities. More specifically, the bottom section of both is exactly the same. In heraldry, the art, history and practice of constructing coats of arms, both shields can be described as party per fess enhanced, which means that both are divided horizontally where the division, or partition (to which the word party is related) lies above the middle from our perspective.
This parallel is for a specific reason: as we can see on the Lancastrian shield, the top half is charged (i.e. what it contains) with a lion of attitude passant, walking. This is clearly an attempt to represent ‘the English’ that Lancaster is, being highly reminiscent of the Royal Arms of England, upon which three lions are adorned. The only difference would be that, for one, traditionally, there are three charged on the English shield, and secondly, these three are of attitude passant guardant (walking and looking at us at the same time). Because of all this the MLang shield, as a contrast, I have tried to include European and worldly symbolism to try and represent the nature of our degree.
I have kept the charges from the bottom half of the Lancaster shield the same, as, where the top half of the Lancaster University shield is a representation of England, the bottom is of a much more Lancastrian feel. The two red Lancastrian Roses, symbols which related first to King Henry IV (1367-1413) and his reign as the first king from the House of Lancaster. More famously, the Red Rose was also a very important symbol in the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), when the House of Lancaster triumphed over the House of York, whose symbol was an inferior White Rose (#RosesAreRed), leading later to the two unifying through a strategic marriage to create ‘The Tudor Rose’ as a symbol of the ensuing peace... although one day Roses will soon show that war still rages on. Below these lie three waves, placed to symbolise Lancaster’s geographical proximity to the sea, and at the bottom, quite simply, is charged a book, clearly to represent the academic nature of the institution – a charge shared with many other universities such as Harvard, Oxford and Princeton.
In terms of new additions, the most eye-catching charge on that of the MLang is quite obviously the sun. Those of us trapped in the gloomy, overcast English climate often see the sun is a symbol of ‘abroad’. When we embark on our year overseas, for the most part we will be leaving behind the dismal English weather and enjoying the warm Mediterranean or Mexican sun, something that we either learn to endure or enjoy depending on the heat. It is a symbol of that our degree pertains to extra-English travel. What inspired me to include a sun as this symbol, interestingly, is its repeated appearance in the national flags of certain countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Uruguay, Argentina or the Philippines; it seemed like an efficient way to capture the idea of ‘overseas’.
Linked to the sun, three beams of light, three sunrays, are charged on the shield, to which lead two flags and a further charge. On the left, there is the flag of the United Kingdom, on the right the flag of the European Union, and in the middle, that same lion that featured originally on the Lancaster University shield. The rays extending from the sun, from this idea of ‘the overseas’, to the U.K., the E.U. and the Lancastrian lion is to represent the links that exist within our degree between all four of these ideas. We travel from the U.K., with Lancaster at our centre, to places overseas, and, for the most part, to countries within the E.U. This being said, I have tried to include recognition that European destinations aren’t the only ones to which we might travel – the blue background as representation of the sky, the blue spherical shape representing an image attune to a globe and its ocean, and the grey backing to our motto as representation of clouds are all to portray extra-European, worldly images.
As previously mentioned, the shield, and therefore the MLang degree, also now has an associated motto. In brainstorming, as a group, we youngest MLings came up with the idea that using Proto-Indo-European would be the best way to encapsulate all of the languages contained within the degree scheme. Using a Latin or Greek motto would exclude German on principle, given how the Germanic and Romance family trees of languages in Linguistics might be considered as symbolically opposite (I do recognise, though, that German does have words whose roots are from Latin; this is of course inevitable because of the geography of Europe and the two families’ proximity to one another). The motto reads gnōtis uperi krēqāsu, and is to mean knowledge across borders.
Surrounding the motto, as well as the whole of the design, is a red border that emboldens towards the top – for one, it is an aesthetic addition, and furthermore, to give the idea that all of this is encapsulated by the Lancaster red; it is all encapsulated by being Lancastrian.
