Researching Language Attitudes Based on Historical Data

Abstract

1 While this volume as a whole aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible, these kinds of historical data have not yet received much attention in other disciplines that are concerned with language attitudes, which is why they are discussed here purely with regard to (historical) sociolinguistics.

Dutch prescriptivism in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective

“…Such non-institutionalized practices, which often take place in spoken interaction, are difficult to identify for historical sociolinguists compared to institutionalized forms of corrective practices and attitudes, which are more easily traceable through language history. However, Havinga and Krogull (2022) show that uncovering language attitudes from historical sources, while difficult, is not impossible. The same text types they mention as valuable sources for research on historical attitudes, namely grammars and schoolbooks, are also often used in research on historical prescriptivism.…”