Language perception and language use in the county of Flanders: the sociolinguistic impact of 1302.

Until now, the perception and use of French and Dutch in the medieval county of Flanders has never been submitted to a systematic analysis. The only article and the series of side remarks on medieval language perception always concern literary texts written in Dutch or in French, whereas a nuanced and complete image requires the presence of other text genres as well. Moreover, the contemporary Latin texts - which possibly contain valuable information - seem always to be omitted, although Latin was by far the most present language throughout the Middle Ages. My project covers this lacuna with a sociolinguistic analysis across genres and languages. In order to measure the possible sociolinguistic impact of 1302, this year is considered as the chronological touch stone for the narrative and non-narrative sources written in Latin, Dutch and French from medieval Flanders which are available in digitized form. In that way, the sources from the very first vernacular texts (12th century) to 1302 are confronted with the texts from 1302 to 1409, when the first language ordinance concerning Flanders was issued by John the Fearless. First, the analysis covers the perception of the vernaculars (or a particular dialect variety) in language names and judgments. The actual use of the language in the different genres can then be confronted to the language perception.

Keywords:Historical sociolinguïstics, Flanders, Diachronic linguistics, Medieval languages

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Linguistics