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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 421

Part of Session 155: Changing linguistic norms in the audiovisual media (Other abstracts in this session)

Fact and fiction in Flemish public broadcasting. Linguistic evolutions in television series

Authors: Van Hoof, Sarah (1,2); Jaspers, Jürgen (1,2)
Submitted by: Van Hoof, Sarah (University of Antwerp, Belgium)

Similar to other western public service broadcasters, the Flemish public broadcasting corporation (VRT) was set up as a centrally organized, monopolist public service, addressing its viewers, the inhabitants of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders), as citizens of the Flemish nation and pursuing a policy of civil emancipation and popular elevation. Moreover, from its foundation in 1931 as a monolingual Dutch broadcaster within the still unitary Belgian state, the VRT was a precursor of Flemish cultural autonomy, paving the way for a openly nationalist broadcasting policy. The linguistic policy ensuing from these modernist and nationalist ideas advocated the use of Standard Dutch in all broadcasting.

The VRT's broadcasting policy went through extensive changes after the liberalization of the Flemish TV market in 1989. The age-old emancipatory and pro-Flemish ideals gradually gave way to an increasing focus on entertainment. The VRT’s language policy, however, stood fast and insisted on Standard Dutch. Even so, the general impression among linguists and commentators in Flemish Belgium today is that especially since the advent of commercial broadcasting, language use in certain TV genres, notably fiction and entertainment genres, has shirked from that policy, succumbing to an evolution of vernacularization that has also been noticed in other Western European countries. Particularly a so-called ‘in-between variety’, lying structurally in between ‘proper’ Standard Dutch on the one hand and ‘real’ dialects on the other, seems to have gained ground.

Focusing on the genre of fiction, the purpose of this lecture is to substantiate the abovementioned impressions by comparing language use in the series broadcast by the VRT in the early 1980s (1977-1985), at the end of the monopolist period, with language use in contemporary fiction (2008-2009). The data consist of a corpus of 21 series, which were analyzed by means of both quantitative, variationist and qualitative, interaction-oriented methods.

Our findings indicate that contrary to general impressions, fiction has been heavily permeated by non-standard language use for at least thirty years. At the same time, however, language use in fiction has changed shape: whereas language use in 1980s fiction was still quite heterogeneous and covered the entire spectrum between Standard Dutch and basilectal dialects, contemporary fiction is dominated by a much more uniform use of the in-between variety, with both dialects and Standard Dutch having virtually disappeared from the genre.

Our purpose is to demonstrate that these linguistic changes are part of wider changes in the genre of fiction over the last 30 years, which in turn can be situated within the foundering of the nationalist and educative broadcasting project. We will argue that as a result of these evolutions, fiction today has become a more problematic genre for the VRT’s language policy than it was in the 1980s, but that at the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, it is precisely due to that emphatic standardization project that both dialects and Standard Dutch have become largely unusable in the genre.