The Evidence of French Influence on the Channel Island. Is French still relevant in local press of the Channel Islands? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject French Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Leipzig (Faculty of Philology, Department of British Studies), language: English, abstract: The goal of this term paper is to examine the ongoing influence of Norman and Standard French on CIE. To present the French influence on CIE, articles in the local online press were studied to find utterances, either grammatical or lexical, that were derived from Norman French. The Guernsey Press and Jersey Evening Post were searched for examples.

Starting with an introduction to the geographical situation and the historical background of the Channel Islands, the term paper will provide an insight into the features of the English of the Channel Islands. Moreover, a short overview about the current linguistic situation will be given. The second part relates to the analysis of newspaper articles regarding the ongoing of the French influence in the local press. Lastly, after summarising the gained findings the term paper provides an outcome on where CIE is headed.

The history of the Channel Islands and their specific geographical situation between France and Great Britain caused the emergence of a lesser known variety of the English language - the English of the Channel Islands. The closeness to France raised various Norman French dialects and arouses the interest in investigating the current linguistic situation. For someone the Channel Islands are clearly an English speaking region; for others, they represent a francophone territory due to their proximity to France. Viereck characterises the Channel Islands as an "Anglicist's no-Man's land". This underlines the ambiguous linguistic situation and provides opportunities for hypotheses concerning the use of the language.