La parole contre la langue : les vulgarismes dans la correspondance croisée de Jérôme et d’Augustin

The letters of both Fathers are stylistically heterogeneous. In the epistolographic sections of their epistulae they use the higher style typical of the polite, educated elite, but when the letters grow into books their style, due to the demands of speed, dictation and the growing prevalence of the res over the uerba, turns to a more technical level and even to an oral one. This weakening of the grammaticality of the dictum in no way means a descent into vulgarism. Rather, it denotes plainly the diasystemic level of the familiar sermo commonly used by doctissimi when they are not required to use common epistolographic étiquette. Such diaphrastic –rather than diastratic– variations can be seen as a distinctive generic marker providing a clear distinction between the topical/phatic part of the epistula and its referential element.Fry Carole. La parole contre la langue : les vulgarismes dans la correspondance croisée de Jérôme et d’Augustin. In: Latin vulgaire – latin tardif IX. Actes du IXe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif, Lyon 2-6 septembre 2009. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2012. pp. 909-920. (Collection de la Maison de l'Orient méditerranéen ancien. Série philologique, 49