![]()
1
Negotiating Address in a Pluricentric Language: Dutch/Flemish
Roel Vismans
Abstract: Dutch is a pluricentric language: in Europe, it is spoken in two different countries (the Netherlands in the north and Flanders, Belgium, in the south) with differing linguistic norms. Vismans investigates what happens when the northern and southern Dutch address systems meet. His data come from in-depth radio interviews between Dutch journalists and Flemish academics. In a qualitative analysis, he tracks the development of the relationship between the two speakers and their use of address forms, as well as other markers of (in)formality. The analysis also takes into account other possible factors affecting the interaction (age, gender, residence in the other country) and pays special attention to speakersâ commentary on the variation between familiar and formal second-person pronouns.
Keywords: Dutch; pluricentric language; address pronouns; radio interviews
Norrby, Catrin, and Camilla Wide, eds. Address Practice As Social Action: European Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137529923.0007.
1 Introduction
This chapter investigates what happens when the northern and southern Dutch address systems meet in interactions between a northern and a southern speaker.1 Since the late 1950s, Dutch pronominal address forms have been on the move, as they have in other languages. There has been a gradual shift away from the traditional non-reciprocal power semantic (Brown and Gilman, 1960) towards a reciprocal system in which the formal pronoun is used to express distance and the informal pronoun to express common ground (for example, Clyne, Norrby and Warren, 2009). This shift was documented for Dutch by, among others, van den Toorn (1977, 1982) and is studied in-depth by Vermaas (2002; for a more recent study, see Vismans, 2013a). These and the vast majority of other studies of (changes in) the modern Dutch address pronouns are concerned with Dutch spoken in the Netherlands. However, Dutch is a pluricentric language â that is, a language that is spoken in two or more different, relatively self-contained jurisdictions whose linguistic norms may differ (compare Clyne, 1992). One of the characteristics of Dutch as a pluricentric language is that the use of address pronouns in its two main centres, the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium, differs considerably.2
The standard (northern) address forms comprise a formal pronoun (u), which can be used both in the singular and plural, and separate singular and plural informal forms. The singular informal forms have the most complex morphology with a salient distinction between stressed forms (jij, jou, jouw) and an unstressed forms (je), and the unstressed form doubles up as generic/impersonal pronoun. Whereas formally the southern standard language has the same forms, and non-dialectal colloquial speech in the north also follows the standard pattern, colloquial southern Dutch does not distinguish between T (informal) and V (formal), but only has the singular pronoun gij (unstressed ge) with the oblique and possessive forms u and uw, and there are regional variants of the plural pronoun. The full paradigm for both standard (northern) and colloquial southern Dutch is given in Table 1.1.
These regional differences in forms and their use can give rise to misunderstandings when northern and southern speakers meet. This chapter therefore aims to investigate the use of address forms and their interpretation in conversations between Dutch and Flemish people. The data for this research are based on three long interviews between a Dutch journalist and a Flemish academic. The chapter opens with some reflections on the status of Dutch as a pluricentric language and the role of address in this. The interviews and their method of analysis are then described, followed by an analysis of the data. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the studyâs findings.
TABLE 1.1 Address pronouns in standard (northern) and colloquial southern Dutch
2 Dutch as a pluricentric language
The Dutch language area is discontinuous. In Europe, it comprises the Netherlands and Flanders, the northern half of Belgium. In South America, Dutch is the official language of Suriname and one of the official languages in the Dutch Caribbean islands Bonaire, Saba and St Eustace, as well as in three independent islands: Aruba, Curaçao and the southern half of St Martin (the other half being French). However, virtually all the literature on Dutch as a pluricentric language concentrates on the relationship between the two European varieties, and given the nature of this chapter we will also focus on European Dutch.
The socio-political setting of Dutch in its two jurisdictions in Europe differs considerably. In the Netherlands, where it is the dominant national language, three regional languages have been recognized within the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, with Frisian at the highest level of recognition, and Low Saxon and Limburgish at a lower level. In Belgium, Dutch is one of three official languages alongside French and German. Since Belgium has not signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the country has no recognized linguistic minorities.
In 1980 Belgium and the Netherlands formed the Dutch Language Union (Nederlandse Taalunie or Taalunie for short), a unique international treaty organization with effective linguistic sovereignty over Dutch. With Belgian federalization in 1993, the Flemish Community took over responsibility for the Dutch language in Belgium and Belgiumâs seat in the Taalunie. In 2004 Suriname acceded to the Taalunie as an associate member. Implicitly the Taalunie recognizes that Dutch is a pluricentric language, for example, where it defines standard Dutch (Taalunie, 2012; translation by author):
In codified standard Dutch, differences between north and south are largely limited to pronunciation and vocabulary. Recent phonological studies have shown, for example, significant differences in articulation rate and speech rate (Verh...
