Document Actions

You are here: FRIAS Fellows Fellows 2021/22 Prof. Dr. Aude Wirth-Jaillard

Prof. Dr. Aude Wirth-Jaillard

Université catholique de Louvain
Linguistics and Medieval History
External Senior Fellow (Marie S. Curie FCFP)
October 2016 - July 2017

CV

Aude Wirth-Jaillard studied Classics, Linguistics and History at the Universities of Strasbourg and Nancy, where she received her PhD in Linguistics. Since 2008, she has been postdoctoral fellow in Linguistics and Medieval History at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Institut Émilie du Châtelet fellowship), Technische Universität Dresden (Fernand Braudel-IFER Outgoing Research Fellowship, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Foundation ‒ European Commission ‒ Fritz Thyssen Foundation) and Université catholique de Louvain (FSR Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and FSR Incoming Postdoctoral Fellowship co-funded by the Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission). In fall 2017, She will be a Research Fellow at Collegium (Institute for Advanced Study of Lyon).

She has published on medieval anthroponymy, toponymy and onomasiology. Her current researches focus on non-literary medieval texts, mainly accounting records, but also trials, deeds or remission letters. In a both linguistic (sociolinguistic and pragmatic) and historical perspective, she studies justice and its language at the end of the Middle Ages, especially from fines received because of behaviours (hitting, injuries, disturbance...) or words (insults, blasphemies, accusations…). She is also interested in the regional varieties of French and is currently working on an etymological and historical dictionary of regionalisms.

Selected Publications

  • 2015: “Formules et variation dans les documents comptables médiévaux : les droits du seigneur à Chamagne dans les registres du receveur de Châtel-sur-Moselle (1429-1530)”, in: I. Draelants/C. Balouzat-Loubet (eds.). La Formule au Moyen Âge II – Formulas in Medieval Culture II. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 61-73.

  • 2014: “Comment étudier la langue des documents comptables médiévaux? Quelques remarques et réflexions méthodologiques sur des sources de données nouvelles pour l’étude du français”, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 130/2, pp. 316-332.

  • 2014: “Histoire et histoire du français: pour une approche interdisciplinaire des sources médiévales non littéraires”, in: W. Ayres-Bennett/T. M. Rainsford (eds.). L’histoire du français. État des lieux et perspectives. Paris: Classiques Garnier, pp. 175-186.

  • 2013: “Un bestiaire pas si bête: moutons (de poussière), chaton (d’arbre) et leurs synonymes en latin et dans quelques langues romanes et non romanes. Essai de sémantique compare”, Revue de linguistique romane 77, pp. 403-435.

  • 2012: “La rhétorique des documents comptables médiévaux: réflexions à partir des comptes du receveur de Châtel-sur-Moselle (1429-1510)”, Comptabilité(s). Revue d’histoire des comptabilités 4 (http://comptabilites.revues.org/1098).

FRIAS Project

Vox Populi. Medieval speech from below, from spoken words to written records

This interdisciplinary project is part of the recent trend of historical sociolinguistics “from below”. However, its approach is novel in several respects: the study period, which has been the subject of relatively little research attention, the textual sources and its perspectives. Its main objective, in the coming years, is to study how people actually spoke at the end of the Middle Ages (1300-1500). During the first year, at FRIAS, it will focus on the question of the degree of fidelity between the actual spoken words and their recording in writing during this period.

For such studies, historical sociolinguistic research is generally based on ego-documents written by lower educated people. Unfortunately, such texts in French are very uncommon for our study period. Therefore, the choice has been made to study medieval texts in which can be found written records of actual spoken language: testimonies in trials, remission letters reporting the words of the victim or of the culprit, reported speech in notarial deeds, accounting records with lists of fines for insults, mockeries, accusations and other words considered unacceptable and punished.