Loanwords and stylistics: on the gallicisms in <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>

Abstract

This article explores the way in which loanwords become incorporated into a recipient language. It concentrates on the interim period, the time between the borrowing of a new word from a donor language and its incorporation into a recipient language. During this period the new word still retains some of its “foreignness”, its associations with another language and culture, therefore its stylistic potential is enhanced. The material is taken from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an English poem written in the latter half of the 14th century, at the time of the greatest influx of French words into English. This article shows that the Gawain-poet uses gallicisms as an expressive part of his poetic technique due to their stylistic potential as what were at the time recent borrowings.

Medieval multilingualism and the expression ofemotion:fearin theGawain-poet's texts

“…Indeed, this has been the narrow focus of studies that have looked specifically at the use of French-derived terms in the Gawain -poet's texts (e.g. Clough 1985; Volkonsaya 2013). These works highlight the overt sociolinguistic prestige of the terms and the connotations of refinement that they bring with them.…”