Department of French

Department of French

   

Mari Jones specialises in French linguistics, especially language death theory and dialectology.

Major publications include Language Obsolescence and Revitalization (OUP, 1998); La langue bretonne aujourd'hui à Plougastel-Daoulas (Brud Nevez, 1998); Jersey Norman French: A linguistic Study of an obsolescent dialect (Blackwell, 2001); The Guernsey Norman French Translations of Thomas Martin: a linguistic study of an unpublished archive (Peeters, 2008). She is also co-editor of Language Change: the interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors (Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), The French Language and Questions of Identity (Legenda, 2007) and Les Langues Normandes: Pluralité, Normes, Représentations (L'Harmattan, 2009), and co-author of Exploring Language Change (Routledge, 2005).

She is interested in all aspects of language change, dialectology, language contact and questions of standardisation. Her research has focused particularly on Welsh, Breton and - at present - the French of the Channel Islands (Jèrriais, Guernesiais, Sercquais).

Current research projects include directing an international research network funded by the AHRC on language and social structure in urban France and major collaborations with the University of Caen: "Patrimoine Linguistique en Normandie" and with the University of Rennes, where she is a research associate at L'Equipe de Recherche sur la diversité Littéraire et Linguistique du monde Francophone:. She is also Visiting Professor in Linguistics at the University of Bamberg and Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Her graduate teaching focuses on Language death theory, Language variation and Sociolinguistics, both within the context of French and of other languages.

She is a co-founder and member of the Executive Committee of the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group.