Introduction

Chapter 1 Introduction It is often forgotten, on both sides of the English Channel, that the Norman linguistic territory is a fragmented one. The defeat of King John of England’s army at Rouen in 1204 at the hands of the French king, Philippe Auguste, led to the separation of the Duchy of Normandy into two domains, with the Norman mainland formally becoming part of the kingdom of France and the Channel Islands henceforth maintained in allegiance to the English Crown. This territorial split has now lasted for more than 800 years. The fracture had no immediate linguistic repercussions. Contact was maintained between mainland and insular Normandy via fishing and other trade activities. However, despite these links, the fact remained that, after 1204, apart from occasional periods when English force of arms detached areas from French control (see Chapter 2), the two Norman territories found themselves governed by opposing powers, who frequently played out their differences on the battlefield. As the centuries progressed, mainland and insular Normandy found themselves on different sides of an ever-widening linguistic gulf, with Norman co-existing alongside two of Europe’s most influential standard lan- guages, namely French and English. Contact with their powerful linguistic neighbours has produced similar out- comes on the mainland and in the islands. Norman has undergone significant territorial contraction and speaker reduction and has witnessed the breaking down of its diglossic relationship with the local standard language as similar social factors, including demographic movement, intermarriage and stigma- tization, have contributed to the loss of Norman from its former strongholds, such as the family domain. This, in turn, has prompted concerns for its future. 1.1 The Norman Territory The present-day region of Normandy, named after the Vikings of Scandinavia, or ‘northmen’, covers some 11,900 square miles (30,821km2).1 Most of the 1 In Old Norse, the term víkingar was reserved for seafarers who participated in warrior voyages across the oceans, the expression fara í víkingu meaning ‘to go an an expedition’. Although the victims of the Vikings do not seem to have distinguished between Danes, Norwegians and Swedes in the terms they use to refer to them, the Scandinavians themselves were conscious © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�57�39_00� 2 Chapter 1 territory (11,825 square miles or 30,627km2) lies in north-west France, and makes up roughly 5% of that country. It is divided into five départements or administrative regions, namely Seine Maritime2 (surface area: 6,278km2, population: 1,250, 411) and Eure (surface area: 6,040km2, population: 586,543) which constitute Haute Normandie ‘Upper Normandy’; and Manche (surface area: 6,938km2, population: 498,747), Orne (surface area: 6,103km2, population: 291,642) and Calvados (surface area: 5,548km2, population: 683,105) which constitute Basse Normandie ‘Lower Normandy’.3 As may be seen, population den- sity in Seine Maritime is far greater than elsewhere in Normandy. Mainland Normandy also divides into smaller geographical areas, whose names are often based on local topography (see Map 1.1). Some 75 square miles of the Norman territory (roughly 194 km2) form a small archipelago lying in the English Channel, off the west of the Cotentin peninsula. Though situated geographically closer to France than to the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands are dependencies of the British Crown, yet they have never formed part of the Kingdom of England (see §2.3). The Channel Islands do not form a political unit—which may go some way towards accounting for the fact that islanders tend to define their identity with respect to their individual island, rather than with reference to the archipelago as a whole (Jones 2008b: 253n; Rosen 2014: 195). They are divided administratively into two Bailiwicks, each with a non-political chief citizen known as a Bailiff, who serves as senior judge in the Royal Courts of Jersey and Guernsey, and moderator of each of those two islands’ parliamentary assemblies. The Bailiwick of Jersey com- prises the island itself, which has a surface area of 45 square miles (116.5km2) and a population of 97,857 (2011)4 and two rocky reefs, the Minquiers and the Ecrehous. The other islands in the archipelago, belonging to the Bailiwick of Guernsey, are Guernsey (surface area: 25 square miles [64.75km2], population: of these distinct ethnic allegiances, even if they spoke the same tongue, albeit with dialectal differences (Renaud 2002: 13–14). 2 Before 1955, the département of Seine Maritime was known as Seine Inférieure. Seine Inférieure is therefore the name used to refer to this area in the Atlas Linguistique de la France (see §1.3.2). 3 These figures, relating to the population as recorded in 2010, are taken from the website of the French National Institute of Statistics http://www.insee.fr/en/ (last accessed 22 April 2014). 4 These figures are taken from the 2011 Census of Jersey http://www.gov.je/SiteCollection Documents/Government%20and%20administration/R%20CensusBulletin1%2020111208% 20SU.pdf (last accessed 22 April 2014). At the time of writing, the French government is exploring ways to reduce the number of administrative regions of France. It is suggested that, as part of these reforms, Haute Normandie and Basse Normandie may be united as one region..

Load more