The Standard Language Situation in the Low Countries: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Variations on a Diaglossic Theme

Grondelaers, Stefan; Hout, R.W.N.M. van

doi:10.1017/s1470542711000110

Cited by 83 publications

(42 citation statements)

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“…Although this is not the focus of the present article, it seems that language attitudes in Flanders are rather different. One reason for this difference may be that Flemish people live in a state of diglossia (Grondelaers & Van Hout 2011). Whatever, the reason, the two language worlds seem increasingly separated, in spite of the existence of a common governmental body, the Taalunie.…”

Section: Language Attitudes Of the Dutchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingualism versus multilingualism in the Netherlands

Oostendorp

2012

LPLP

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What are the consequences of the rise of English for the languages spoken in the Netherlands, a medium-sized EU Country in which most of the inhabitants speak a medium-sized language? There are several indications that the Dutch are moving from being a traditionally multilingual population, priding themselves on their knowledge of many foreign languages, to being bilingual, priding themselves on their knowledge of English. The rise of English as an international lingua franca does not seem to harm the position of Dutch in the Netherlands, but it may harm the position of other languages.Keywords: bilingualism, multilingualism, government bodies, international organizations, monolingualism, language attitudes, higher education, English language Many travelers to the Netherlands have observed that the Dutch are to a large extent bilingual. "Just about everyone you meet in Amsterdam will be able to speak near-perfect English, " the Rough Guide website claims, 1 and it is not very difficult to substantiate this informal observation with numbers. For instance, in a 2006 special Eurobarometer report, researchers for the European Commission note that 87% of Dutch citizens speak English as a second language The number is slightly higher in Sweden (89%) and Malta (88%), but everywhere else it is lower. The average in the European Union was 38% in 2006. 2 These numbers are in particularly strong contrast with those of the United Kingdom and Ireland, in which only 38% and 34% of the population, respectively, knows any language other than their native tongue -which is, of course, usually English. Within the Netherlands this number is 91%; in Europe as a whole it is 56%; the only country which comes as low as the UK and Ireland is the candidate EU member Turkey (at 33%), although Italy (41%) and Portugal (42%) come close. © 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved Bilingualism versus multilingualism 253It is intuitively clear that the low level of language knowledge in the UK and Ireland is attributable to the fact that these are English-speaking countries, where most people feel that they do not need other languages for their international communication. 3 In this article, I examine what this bilingualism means both for Dutch and other languages spoken in the Netherlands, and how formal language policy, both at the state level and at the level of the provinces, has influenced bilingualism and been influenced by it. A key hypothesis is that the country is slowly moving in the direction of becoming bi-rather than multi-lingual. The rise of English does not seem to harm Dutch, but it does affect knowledge of other languages. To some extent the same effect is to be seen as in the traditional English-speaking countries: knowledge of English makes the knowledge of other languages obsolete. In spite of this, the debate about language policy making is shifting to an exclusive focus on the protection of Dutch.It is not my intention to demonstrate that the Netherlands is special in this respect. My findings are ...

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Section: Language Attitudes Of the Dutchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingualism versus multilingualism in the Netherlands

Oostendorp

2012

LPLP

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“…While the present-day situation of European dialect/standard constellations is often described in terms of diaglossia, it is also argued that this stage of diaglossia only recently developed from a previous period of diglossia (Auer, 2005(Auer, , 2011Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011). In this paper, I argue that historical sociolinguistic research shows that the supposed historical development from diglossia to diaglossia cannot be found in western European languages such as Dutch, English and German.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Auer, 2005Auer, , 2011Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011). Already in the Early and Late Modern period, sociolinguistic space as evidenced in the written record was diaglossic.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Focusing on the pluricentric Dutch language area, Grondelaers and van Hout (2011) analyze the present-day situation of diaglossia in Belgium and The Netherlands. They argue that the concept of diaglossia indeed captures sociolinguistic space in the present, although it may be the result from very different processes.…”

Section: Sociolinguistic Space Past and Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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9 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch

Rutten¹

2016

Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics

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While the present-day situation of European dialect/standard constellations is often described in terms of diaglossia, it is also argued that this stage of diaglossia only recently developed from a previous period of diglossia. This paper argues that historical sociolinguistic research shows that the supposed historical development from diglossia to diaglossia cannot be found in western European languages such as Dutch, English and German. Instead, the sociolinguistic situation in the Early and Late Modern period should already be considered as diaglossic. The empirical data provided by historical sociolinguistic studies challenge the empirical validity of earlier descriptions of language history, as well as the related theories of standardization. I will substantiate these claims by an analysis of individual variation in the expression of negation in a corpus of Dutch private letters from the Early Modern period. I will argue that standardization is essentially a metalinguistic phenomenon datable to the late eighteenth century, and not an appropriate descriptive label for ongoing processes of norm convergence in the late-and post-medieval period, for which supralocalization is a better term.

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“…In Grondelaers and Van Hout (2011a) and Grondelaers, Van Hout and Speelman (2011), we have proposed three causes for the norm relaxation in NSD, and the progressing variability it engenders. A first cause is undoubtedly the increasing informalization of our society, and the concomitant anti-authoritarian sentiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Where is Dutch (really) heading?

Grondelaers

Hout²

2012

DuJAL

Self Cite

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Like other European standard languages, Dutch is currently undergoing destan dard i zation processes which excite concern on the part of the linguistic and cultural establishment, and inspire uncertainty in school teachers of Dutch. In the face of the progressing variability in a variety which should (in theory) be uniform, the question which norm should be taught in the schools is becoming increasingly legitimate, though theoretical linguists do not typically concern themselves with it. This paper first pools and reviews the available evidence in favour of a more positive account of ongoing developments in Netherlandic Standard Dutch (NSD). It then proposes a concrete division of labour between formal and less formal varieties of Dutch. Our principal conclusion is that the norm relaxation observed in NSD must not engender lawlessness in language teaching.

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The Standard Language Situation in the Low Countries: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Variations on a Diaglossic Theme

Cited by 83 publications

References 19 publications

Bilingualism versus multilingualism in the Netherlands

Bilingualism versus multilingualism in the Netherlands

9 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch

Where is Dutch (really) heading?

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