This book is the first to present a comprehensive linguistic study of

Jersey Norman French. Drawing on a corpus of original data, it offers

historical and dialectological sketches, an assessment of language

planning on Jersey, and an account of language change in progress. It

also establishes the relevance of Jersey Norman French to the field of

language obsolescence.

Our choice of linguistic code is one of the most fundamental ways open to us of establishing our membership of some groups and our distance from others. This symbolic value of language may often leave it open to exploitation, especially by the state. The present volume demonstrates how the multi-faceted nature of the concept of identity makes its relationship with language both complex and unpredictable. Because of its particular historical and social characteristics, the French language provides especially fertile territory for the exploration of this theme.
Four main axes stand out in...