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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 512

Part of Session 181: Folk linguistics and society (Other abstracts in this session)

Spoken Dutch in Flanders: Perceptions and attitudes of the Dutch language situation by non-linguists

Authors: Lybaert, Chloé
Submitted by: Lybaert, Chloé (Ghent University, Belgium)

In recent years, a lot has been published about the spoken language in Flanders, and especially about the use of tussentaal (lit. ‘in-between-language’), a mixture of dialect and standard Dutch (e.g. De Caluwe, 2009; Grondelaers & Van Hout, 2011). Many linguists observe an increasing use of tussentaal and it is often postulated that Flemings now use this language variety in situations where they used to speak dialect or Standard Dutch. Others claim that tussentaal has always existed, but there has been a change in the intentions of the speakers: in past decades Flemings intended to speak Standard Dutch in formal situations, but failed to do so. Nowadays, however, Flemings would actually intend to speak this in-between-language.

A lot has been postulated about the language behavior of non-linguists, without consulting these linguistic lays themselves: “there is an […] absence of perception data, pertaining to lay evaluations of ongoing change" (Grondelaers & Van Hout, 2011, p. 201). According to De Caluwe (2009, p. 9) there is even a strong tendency for linguists to project their knowledge and perception of micro and macro variation in Flanders on the knowledge of non-linguists. Suppose the present variation in the spoken language repertoire in Flanders is categorized and appreciated differently by non-linguists, the future of Dutch in Flanders may be quite different from what specialists think and hope.

In our study, we want to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of the average language user towards language variation in Flanders, an investigation which fits in with the development of “a general folk theory of language” (Preston, 2002). In this investigation, we want to answer the following questions:

1.       How does the average non-linguist conceive/perceive linguistic variation in Flanders?

Who still applies a bipolar model with only dialect and standard language? Is the concept of tussentaal more than a construction of linguists and is it a language variety of which ordinary language users are aware? How do non-linguists feel about norm relaxations in the standard language?

2.       Which knowledge does the average Fleming have of linguistic variation on a micro level?

What does the average Fleming know about the linguistic status of phonological, lexical and morpho-syntactical variables? Is a certain variable a dialectal variable, is it Standard Dutch, and so on?

To investigate these questions, 80 informants were subjected to a qualitative interview in which they were asked to judge several audio-fragments, spoken in four regional versions of tussentaal or in Standard Dutch.

References:

De Caluwe, J. (2009). Tussentaal wordt omgangstaal in Vlaanderen. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 14, 8-25.

Grondelaers, S., & Van Hout, R. (2011). The Standard Language Situation in the Low Countries: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Variations on a Diaglossic Theme. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 23(3), 199-243.

Preston, D. (2002). Language with an attitude. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes (Eds.), The handbook of language variation and change (pp. 40-66). Oxford/Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publichers.