Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 42, Issue 1, 1992

This contribution discusses the state of affairs of sociolinguistics in the Dutch language area. The discussion is particularly based on the conference papers in the proceedings of the "First Conference on Sociolinguistics", which was organized in November 1991. This conference was meant to be the first one in a series of conferences to stimulate sociolinguistic research in the Dutch language area and to bring together sociolinguistic researchers from different areas. The contributions in this volume represent the plenary lectures from that conference.In our overview two questions are addressed:1. For which topics did the attention diminish over the last ten years and which topics seem to have gained importance? Is research into social vari-ability and the social context of language and language behaviour loosing its impact?2. Are theoretical developments in sociolinguistics rather scattered and diffuse and is there hardly any theoretical progress in sociolinguistics?

In this paper we describe a number of features of the history of Negerhollands (Creole Dutch), spoken on the Danish Antilles, later U.S. Virgin Islands, between around 1700 and 1900 (the last remaining speaker died recently). Special attention is paid to early history and demography, linguistic features of the creole (on the basis of a number of proverbs), a characterization of the type of Dutch that provided the lexical input for the language, and variation in the creole itself. The paper provides the framework in which much more detailed research, based on the analysis of 18th century manuscript sources, can be carried out in the near future.

The growing presence of ethnic minority groups in society is not a phenomenon that can only be observed in the Netherlands. It is estimated that in the year 2000 about one-third of the population below 35 years in urban Western Europe will have an immigrant background. Against this background, demographic trends in processes of immigration and the emergence of ethnic minority groups will be discussed, both from a European and nationalperspective. Special attention will be paid to problems in defining and identifying ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands, and to the neglected role of the language factor in these issues.As a follow-up of this target group discussion, the focus will be on major characteristics of Dutch policies regarding the education of ethnic minority groups. Both in primary and secondary education, a two-track approach can be observed. Special educational arrangements are made for the teaching of Dutch as a second language and the teaching of ethnic community languages. An outline of this two-track approach will be presented, along with recent research evidence and policy initiatives. Moreover, ideas will be presented for a re-thinking of some basic pre-conceptions in these particular domains of educational policy.

In this article conversational analysis is criticised as to theory and practice. In terms of internal criticism it is argued that 1. there is a lack of theoretical starting points which makes observation less fruitful than possible; 2. the anti-structural attitude, however understandable, is counter-productive as to theoretical development; 3. the conversational analytic working method can be characterised as bottom-up in contrast to the cognitive principles of human mind that is organised top down to a large extent. This bottom-up approach denies the actual differences occurring in the mental activities of both participants and analyst. It, furthermore, neglects the proper questions of research as to how all kinds of information that the conversationalist has to his disposition and may put to usage when communicating, is organised mentally. Therefore, the discussion on rules, strategies, principles, etc. does not take place systematically in conversation analysis; 4. the inductive standpoint and approach of conversation analysis prohibits the formulation of generalizations. Furthermore, there is no methodology available to deal with deductive aspects of investigation; 5. the above discussed characteristics of conversational analysis lead to serious method-ological problems for the investigation of the human discourse capacity.As far as the external criticism of conversational analysis is concerned, it must be maintained, that conversational analysis isolates itself from other neighbouring disciplines, in such a way that it can but does not profit of related research findings of connected disciplines. Finally it is argued that conversation analysis is hardly interested in (or even ignores) the problem of application of research findings in every day practice.

In this confrontative article I take stock of what socioiinguistics and dialec-tology (= dialect geography), in spite of (or thanks to?) their own focus and their own theoretical underpinnings, have contributed to the study of language change. This confrontation consists of two parts: First (4.1.) I deal with those aspects where socioiinguistics has contributed substantially to the exploration of language change and at the same time has had a renewing influence on dialectology:1) Sociolinguists have started measuring the functional/communicative strength of linguistic varieties that in a certain area may supply competing variants.2) By all kinds of micro-research into linguistic variation in correlation with social and situational factors socioiinguistics has drawn a much more refined picture of the process of language change.3) Socioiinguistics has reintroduced attention to the psychological dimension of language change ( _ inquiries into the attitudes towards compet-ing varieties and variants and into the awareness of social differentiation in language).In a second part (4.2.) I deal with those aspects where the contribution of dialectology has been more substantial and where socioiinguistics urgently needs some broadening:1) In general dialectologists have better recognized that linguistic varia-tion (as a random indication of language change) is also embedded in the systemic dimension of language. This prevents the investigation of (linguistic) variety for variety's sake.2) Dialectology permanently instructs sociolinguists that linguistic variation (and hence language change) also occurs along a spa-tial/geographical dimension.3) The dialogist's traditional tool, the dialect map with the so often (unjustly) abused isogloss, provides the socioiinguistics with lots of interesting instructions where as to catch linguistic change in progress.In general both disciplines display such a delicious complementarity that (sterile) discussions about their mutual demarcation should urgently be replaced by a thorough examination of each other's methods and findings.