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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 942

Part of Session 105: Language and Superdiversity (Other abstracts in this session)

Identity politics and the carnivalesque: A case study of languageculture in the peripheral province of Limburg, The Netherlands

Authors: Cornips, Leonie (1,3); Rooij, Vincent (2); Stengs, Irene (1)
Submitted by: Cornips, Leonie (Maastricht University/Meertens Instituut (KNAW), Netherlands, The)

Our paper will focus on an interdisciplinary study of ‘languageculture,’ an approach to language and culture in which ideology, linguistic and cultural forms, as well as praxis are studied in relation to one another. In our talk we will show how an integrated analysis of the selection of linguistic and cultural elements provides insight into how these choices arise from internalized norms and values, and how people position themselves toward received categories and hegemonic ideologies. Such an interdisciplinary approach will stimulate a rethinking of established concepts and methods of research. It will also lead to a mutual strengthening of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and anthropological research.

            This contribution will focus on Limburg and the linguistic political context of this Southern-Netherlands region. Limburg’s integration into the Dutch state is of recent date (end of 19th century), and many cultural and linguistic peculiarities have been maintained as part of a sense of Limburg peripherality. In Limburg, differences between dialects and between dialect and standard Dutch (or regional varieties of it) are never socially neutral. Limburg’s political and cultural specificity vis-à-vis the Western part of the Netherlands ensures that social signification in language practices is often a matter of more conscious interpretative work than in places where linguistic variation is less politically charged. We will show how in our case study unexpected selections of linguistic elements and choices create complexity and ambiguity in processes of social semiosis.

Although in Limburg there is probably a wider array of approaches followed in doing identity through language due to the vitality and prestige of the dialects, we will discuss two routes that are of crucial interest in our research. First, there is what one may call the cultivating dialect approach. Based on descriptive and prescriptive efforts by dialect societies, but also resulting from dialect promotion by local govermental bodies, many Limburgians may feel the necessity to write proper Limburgian, i.e. Limburgian as it is codified and promoted. A second approach in doing identity is the one that may be characterized as carnivalesque, serious-play. This may be taken by those who rebel against dominant language norms.

            The argument of our talk about languageculture will be based on a case-study of carnival and carnivalesque play in which exaggeration and magnification have an important role, and which are cultural forms that also are inextricably connected with language. Consequently, there is always a more serious, more political undertone to the carnivalesque. In our paper we will point out how and why the combined play of linguistic forms and ritualized forms may have a reinforcing effect, and that we have to take both of these dimensions into consideration to better appreciate the identity politics that are played out.