Abstract
This paper investigates bilingual interfaces between Middle English and Middle Low German in The Book of Margery Kempe from a sociolinguistic and language-contact perspective and posits Kempe’s limited receptive competence in Low German. Her linguistic skills are set against the background of historical facts known about Kempe and her family networks at Bishop’s Lynn, Norfolk, and Danzig, Prussia, dominated by the Hanseatic trade, as well as her relationship with a Duche preste at the church of St John Lateran in Rome and other encounters with speakers of Low German. The data for the study come both from the metalinguistic comments on medieval German varieties and their speakers in the Book and from a handful of Low German loanwords present in the text. Their availability also reflects on the transmission of the Book, in particular on the involvement of three male scribes, one of them, likely, Margery’s son John, in the drafting and copying of the extant text.
Timofeeva, Olga