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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 276

Part of Session 145: Conflicts in the city, cities in conflict? (Other abstracts in this session)

The city as a safe haven in language conflict? Migration and language in 17th-century Dunkirk, French Flanders

Authors: Knooihuizen, Remco
Submitted by: Knooihuizen, Remco (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands, The)

The region of French Flanders, centred around the city of Dunkirk, has undergone a slow but steady language shift from Dutch to French in the past centuries, especially after the area’s annexation to France in the mid- to late-17th century. Although some of the language shift can be explained by France’s restrictive policies towards minority languages (Martel 2001), migration and integration between the two language groups also played a significant role (Knooihuizen 2011). The integration would form both a motive and a mechanism for language shift, while an apparent bias against integration through intermarriage may explain why Dutch persisted as a first language long into the 20th century, despite an unbalanced language contact situation (Ryckeboer 2004).

My study of migration and intermarriage in 17th-century Dunkirk used two different measures to identify an individual migrant’s language background: one geographical, based on the majority language in a person’s location of origin at the time (Ryckeboer 2000), and one onomastic, based on a person’s name (Debrabandere 2003). Although there was a significant correlation between the two measures in general, there were also quite a number of mismatches.

In this paper, I examine in detail the mismatch between location- and name-based language allocations, suggesting that these may have been indicative of differences in societal and individual language preferences. I investigate whether language conflict may have been a contributing factor in the migrants’ decision to move to Dunkirk. I further trace individual migrants’ behaviour of integration or segregation through their choice of marriage partner in Dunkirk, aiming to answer the question of whether the multilingual city functioned as a safe haven for linguistic refugees by offering them an opportunity for language maintenance.

References:

Debrabandere, F. (2003). Woordenboek van de familienamen in België en Noord-Frankrijk. Amsterdam & Antwerpen: Veen.

Knooihuizen, R. (2011). The use of historical demography for historical sociolinguistics: the case of Dunkirk. In Langer, N., Davies, S., and Vandenbussche, W. (eds.), Language and history, linguistics and historiography. Oxford: Peter Lang. 323–340.

Martel, P. (2001). Autour de Villers-Cotterêts: histoire d’un débat. Lengas 49. 7–25.

Ryckeboer, H. (2000). The role of political borders in the millennial retreat of Dutch (Flemish) in the north of France. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 145. 79–108.

Ryckeboer, H. (2004). Frans-Vlaams. Tielt: Lannoo.