The present paper examines Dutch-French language choice in the history of the Northern Low Countries, focussing on the private domain in the nineteenth century. Seeking to assess the phenomenon... Show moreThe present paper examines Dutch-French language choice in the history of the Northern Low Countries, focussing on the private domain in the nineteenth century. Seeking to assess the phenomenon from a quantitative perspective, while meaningfully integrating the role of intra-writer variation, we present two complementary approaches. On the basis of a substantial dataset of private family correspondence, we first illustrate a quantitative methodology that allows us to systematically study the sociolinguistics dynamics that determine language choice. The variables under investigation include gender constellations and familial relationships. Secondly, we zoom in on intra-writer variation in three selected family archives, taking a more qualitative perspective in order to add valuable nuances to the ‘bigger picture’. Show less
This paper seeks to approach the topic of historical language choice from a quantitative perspective, arguing that solid baseline evidence drawn from a substantial dataset is a much-needed... Show moreThis paper seeks to approach the topic of historical language choice from a quantitative perspective, arguing that solid baseline evidence drawn from a substantial dataset is a much-needed complement to the largely qualitative findings of previous research. We propose a methodological framework which enables us to examine the sociolinguistic factors that condition language choice in the private domain. Illustrating the possibilities of our methodology, we present a case study on Dutch-French language choice in the Northern Low Countries (i.e., the present-day Netherlands), focusing on nineteenth-century family correspondence. Our paper shows that a careful selection procedure is crucial in order to achieve a balanced representation of language choice in a large-scale dataset. With respect to our analyses, the role of French in private letters turns out to be relatively small against the prevalence of Dutch. However, interesting patterns become visible when looking at regional differences, gender constellations and familial relationships. These quantitative findings can therefore constitute an interpretational frame for qualitative studies on historical language choice in the Dutch-French context and beyond. Show less
This chapter outlines how historical data can be used for research on language attitudes, concentrating on the field of historical sociolinguistics. It first discusses methodological challenges... Show moreThis chapter outlines how historical data can be used for research on language attitudes, concentrating on the field of historical sociolinguistics. It first discusses methodological challenges when working with historical data. Since historical (socio-)linguists cannot elicit data, they rely on the written and typically fragmented data available, which provide limited access to the attitudes of individuals. Furthermore, the boundaries between language attitudes and language ideologies are less sharply drawn in historical sociolinguistic research than in research on present-day data. Attitudes and ideologies are usually not addressed separately and often set in other linguistic contexts, such as language standardisation, linguistic purism, and prescriptivism. The second section of the chapter provides an overview of promising text sources that can be utilised to study language attitudes in the past, including normative texts, ego-documents, and statistical accounts, discussing both their potentials and drawbacks. The third section explains how these sources can be analysed, focussing on discourse-analytical and corpus-linguistic methods. To illustrate the main points made in this chapter, two case studies (one on German and one on Dutch) are presented. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of emerging trends in historical sociolinguistics, particularly the move towards studying language attitudes in multilingual settings. Show less
Ego-documents are at the heart of historical sociolinguistics. Contrary to what a label such as ego-document may suggest, Early and Late Modern ego-documents constitute a heterogenous group of... Show moreEgo-documents are at the heart of historical sociolinguistics. Contrary to what a label such as ego-document may suggest, Early and Late Modern ego-documents constitute a heterogenous group of genres comprising, among others, private letters, diaries and travel journals. Empirical studies have shown that there are important linguistic differences between private letters on the one hand, and diaries/journals on the other. The latter often seem surprisingly standard-like or formal. Theoretical models of register variation and conceptual orality can partially explain the differences, without however offering a full explanation of the surprising formality of diaries/journals. We argue that it is crucial to take into account recent work by social historians concerning diaries/journals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Diary-writing was an inherently reflexive practice allowing authors to reflect on their lives, and to create a textually fixed point of reference. Authors of diaries had a variable and multilayered audience in mind of known and unknown readers. We introduce the observee’s paradox: while creating private texts for themselves in which they were their own observers and observees, authors of diaries also reckoned with unknown readers in a possibly distant future, which prompted them to shift into a more formal or standard-like register. Show less
Historical metalinguistic discourse is known to often prescribe linguistic variants that are not very frequent in actual language use, and to proscribe frequent variants. Infrequent variants that... Show moreHistorical metalinguistic discourse is known to often prescribe linguistic variants that are not very frequent in actual language use, and to proscribe frequent variants. Infrequent variants that are promoted through prescription can be innovations, but they can also be conservative forms that have already largely vanished from the spoken language and are now also disappearing in writing. An extreme case in point is the genitive case in Dutch. This has been in decline in usage from at least the thirteenth century onwards, gradually giving way to analytical alternatives such as prepositional phrases. In the grammatical tradition, however, a preference for the genitive case was maintained for centuries. When ‘standard’ Dutch is officially codified in 1805 in the context of a national language policy, the genitive case is again strongly preferred, still aiming to ‘revive’ the synthetic forms. The striking discrepancy between metalinguistic discourse on the one hand, and developments in language use on the other, make the genitive case in Dutch an interesting case for historical sociolinguistics. In this paper, we tackle various issues raised by the research literature, such as the importance of genre differences as well as variation within particular genres, through a detailed corpus-based analysis of the influence of prescription on language practices in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch. Show less
European language histories, including the history of Dutch, have often been portrayed as broadly linear developments towards one uniform standard language. In this biased account, rooted in the... Show moreEuropean language histories, including the history of Dutch, have often been portrayed as broadly linear developments towards one uniform standard language. In this biased account, rooted in the nation-building era around 1800, language diversity and multilingualism were largely rendered invisible. Against the background of clearly segregated spaces, politically and linguistically, border settings have particularly challenged the monolingual ideology of ‘one nation–one language’. Taking a historical-sociolinguistic perspective, this article focuses on the Dutch-German borderlands in the long nineteenth century as an intriguing case to investigate historical multilingualism and language contact ‘from below’. Despite the growing importance of nation-states and their standard languages, it is shown that multilingual practices and contact phenomena can still be traced in handwritten archival documents from the private sphere. Illustrative examples come from various family archives in the border area as well as from a unique collection of letters written by (Low) German labour migrants to their Dutch employer. These sources give evidence of the Dutch-German borderlands as a multi-faceted sociolinguistic space well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, they suggest that established theories of multilingualism and language contact may require rethinking in order to account for less clear-cut and more fluid practices in the past. Show less
The paper discusses implementation and acceptance as crucial elements of a historical-sociolinguistic reappraisal of Haugen’s well-known theory of standardization. The case study that we focus on... Show moreThe paper discusses implementation and acceptance as crucial elements of a historical-sociolinguistic reappraisal of Haugen’s well-known theory of standardization. The case study that we focus on is the Dutch language in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. In this period, Dutch became an object of political control. Significant aspects of the nationalization of language were the establishment of an officialized orthography (1804) and grammar (1805), which were to be used in the national school system. Education was the societal domain in which the national government tried to secure the transmission of the national language norms. We study the implementation and acceptance of official language norms from two perspectives, viz. by focusing on teaching materials developed for the new national school system, and by analyzing a recently compiled corpus of original language data from this period. We argue that implementation and acceptance, though relatively understudied topics in standardization studies, can usefully be operationalized, and turned into empirical questions that historical-sociolinguistic analysis can answer. Show less
This dissertation provides new insights into language variation and change in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Dutch. More specifically, it investigates whether and to what extent... Show moreThis dissertation provides new insights into language variation and change in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Dutch. More specifically, it investigates whether and to what extent official language policy measures exerted influence on actual language practice.During the nation-building period around 1800, the Northern Netherlands witnessed the introduction of a national language policy, which aimed at the spread of a homogeneous written standard variety of Dutch, symbolising 'the' nation. In concrete terms, these top-down endeavours resulted in the first official codification of the Dutch orthography (Siegenbeek 1804) and grammar (Weiland 1805). Despite marking a decisive turning point in the standardisation history of Dutch, the effectiveness of the so-called schrijftaalregeling 'written language regulation' has never been investigated empirically.Taking a historical-sociolinguistic approach, this dissertation aims to fill this research gap by examining the impact of language policy on patterns of variation and change. How successful was the schrijftaalregeling in disseminating the officialised norms across the population at large, as envisaged by the government? Making use of the newly compiled Going Dutch Corpus, a diachronic multi-genre corpus comprising more than 420,000 words of authentic usage data (private letters, diaries and travelogues, newspapers), a wide range of orthographic and morphosyntactic features is analysed. Show less
The early nineteenth century saw the introduction of the first national orthography and grammar of Dutch, commissioned by the government and officially codified by Siegenbeek (1804) and Weiland ... Show moreThe early nineteenth century saw the introduction of the first national orthography and grammar of Dutch, commissioned by the government and officially codified by Siegenbeek (1804) and Weiland (1805), respectively. However, the effectiveness of this so-called schrijftaalregeling ‘written language regulation’ on actual language usage has never been investigated empirically. Based on a newly compiled multi-genre corpus of Dutch private letters, diaries and newspapers from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this paper sheds light on the impact of the nationalist language policy on linguistic patterns of variation and change in the Northern Netherlands. The case study focuses on the orthographic representation of final /t/ in second and third person singular and second person plural present indicative forms of verbs with a d-stem (e.g. worden ‘become’, vinden ‘find’), which attracted a great deal of attention in metalinguistic discourse. While the corpus results indicate a considerable effect of standard language norms on language practice, they also disprove the traditional assumption that nineteenth-century spelling was entirely homogeneous. Show less
