The Rise of French: An Examination of Latin's Influence upon Middle French through Analysis of Christine de Pizan's Treatises

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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the vernacular Middle French began to be used more extensively as a language of prestige over Latin, which had been overwhelmingly the scholarly lingua franca as well as the official language in law, politics, medicine, and science. Part of this linguistic shift involved the elevation of French by latinization practices performed by translators, clerics, and writers seeking to capture the full meaning of the Latin and impose more formal structure upon Middle French, as well as to make French into a more serious and prestigious language. Christine de Pizan, a French author of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, provides an excellent case study for the use of Latin to elevate Middle French as a language of prestige. Sociolinguistically, her choice to write in Middle French over Latin shows a calculated choice to make her work more accessible to her intended audience of women, who were literate in the vernacular, but not in Latin. Her use of latinisms, or latinization processes shows an attempt to elevate her own French so that her writing may be taken seriously by her academic peers.
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