Mutter- oder Ammensprache?

Most medical, pedagogical and literary depictions of first language acquisition up to the nineteenth century are centered around the figure of the wet nurse.The belief in the transmission of physical, moral and even linguistic features from the wet nurse to the infant not only through a long and intimate contact, but also through milk itself, features prominently in rhetorical and linguistic texts.From 1750 onwards, advances in paediatric medicine combined with new trends in childrearing contributed to the general adoption of maternal breastfeeding.The present paper investigates the relationship between wet nursing practices in first language acquisition and the transition towards maternal breastfeeding and a national conception of the mother tongue.For linguists and pedagogues around 1800, both the rejection of wet nursing and the revindication of the pure language of mothers are an integral part of the project of a national language.