Linda Gennies studied French, Political Science and Economics at Freie Universität Berlin and Université Lumière Lyon II as well as Romance, German and English Linguistics at the University of Potsdam, where she graduated in 2015. After working as a research assistant at the Institute of Romance languages at the University of Potsdam for two years, she joined the Collaborative Research Center 980 “Episteme in Motion” in 2016. As a research associate of the sub-project C08 on Early Modern language learning and teaching, she is currently working on her PhD thesis.

Social, Cultural and Grammatical Perspectives on Changing Forms of Address in Early Modern Europe

In her PhD project, Linda Gennies examines the change of polite forms of address that took place in German and in the Romance languages from the 15^th century onwards. More precisely, the project’s focus is on the influence that cultural and linguistic contacts between the speech communities in question had with regards to these changes. Looking at both social, cultural and grammatical conditions of use of polite forms of address, the project aims at uncovering the precise language-external and -internal dynamics that – despite of the socio-cultural interconnectedness of Early Modern Europe – led to a considerable divergence in European address form systems.