Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 76, Issue 1, 2006

This article presents an overview of sociolinguistic research in the Dutch-speaking community of The Netherlands and Belgium. The overview is based on the contributions to the 5th Sociolinguistic Conference held in March, 2006, after four earlier conferences in 1991, 1995, 1999 and 1993. Compared to the earlier conferences, the 2006 conference shows roughly the same distribution of topics. Content-wise, no great changes have taken place. In terms of numbers of participants and papers, however, a decrease in the number of participants was observed, which was mainly due to a smaller number of Belgian participants. Fortunately, the quantity of the output did not really suffer from this decrease.

In a number of domains of language contact studies important progress has been made, including Creole studies, code switching and code mixing, second language acquisition, linguistic borrowing, and language areas. Less attention has been paid to the conceptual links between these fields. These links will be the focus of the present paper, which approaches this issue from the perspective of speaker optimization strategies. Four alternative strategies are proposed: optimize the structural coherence of the LI, optimize possible matching between LI and L2 patterns, optimize universal principles of language processing, optimize the structural coherence of the L2. It will be argued that these strategies can be invoked to explain outcomes of language contact, and that different outcomes correspond to different rankings of these strategies by bilingual speakers and the community they belong to.

Academic or school language is a specific register of language that involves the use of language for cognitively complex, decontextualised communication. When children enter school they are expected to be able to participate in situations where this kind of language use is demanded. Some children may be well prepared for this, whereas others are not. In this article the design and first findings of the DASH-project (Development of Academic language in School and at Home) are presented, focusing on interactions between Dutch, Turkish and Moroccan-Berber mothers and their three-year-old children. To enable the analysis of the language use of mothers and children, a coding protocol was developed for this project. The coding protocol is based on functional grammar (Halliday) and focuses on characteristics of academic language (Schleppegrell). The aim of the first analyses presented here is to find out if the coding protocol makes it possible to find differences in the language use of mothers and young children - from different backgrounds and in different languages - related to academic language use. First the dimensions of field, mode and tenor in the coding protocol are being described, as well as the variables that are coded in each field. Subsequently, some preliminary analyses and findings are presented of the language data of two Turkish and two Moroccan-Berber mothers of different socio-economic backgrounds with their three-year old children on a picture task. The results of this analysis show differences in the language use of the mothers and children on each of the dimensions. These differences seem to be related to the concept of academic language in the sense that the language input of higher educated mothers show more characteristics of academic language than that of mothers with a lower educational level.

For the implementation of content-based language instruction a better understanding is required of content teachers' behaviour and thinking. This understanding could form the basis of a strategically designed package of professional development activities as well as for the design of pre-service curricula. The results of seven case studies showT how teachers develop their interaction practice and their thinking about student participation in interaction. The findings show a hypothetical pattern in this development. The article discusses the consequences of the results for the context and conditions of implementation and professional development projects and outlines perspectives for future research.

Since the 1990's the schools in Brussels schools have had a considerable amount, sometimes 100%, of non-native speakers of Dutch who are not confronted with Dutch outside the school walls and for whom Dutch often is their third of fourth language. Teachers experience this educational setting as extremely difficult and unique. In order to structurally enhance the quality of education, the Priority Policy Brussels (PPB) was started in 2000. Its goal is to make up for pupils' learning and developmental arrears by increasing teachers' professionalism through practice- and needs-based, long-term and made-to-measure support of local school teams by expert school counsellors. The Centre for Language and Education was (in partial collaboration with the Centre for Intercultural Education from the University of Gent) appointed to conduct a longitudinal evaluation study of the PPB. Throughout various stages of quantitative and qualitative research the central research question considered the impact of the PPB on teachers' perceptions and on teachers' actions and pupils' language testing results. This article reports on this study and its (mainly positive) results.

This paper analyzes how hypothetical questions are imbedded in their local conversational context. Hypothetical questions occur in contexts where the object of conversation is to appear in the near future. In studies on the communicative practice in job interviews and AIDS-counselling it is observed that hypothetical questions do not occur in isolation, but that they are preceded and followed by other interrelated questions. We examined the use of hypothetical questions in meetings between social workers of the Child Protection Board and prospective adoptive parents. We focused in particular on the preliminary conversational work that has to be done before a hypothetical question and be asked and on the conversational patterns in which a hypothetical situation can be discussed. Thirty-seven discourse-units including a hypothetical question were analyzed. The results of the analysis provide a systematic overview of talking about future pedagogic problems in the institutional setting of the Child Protection Board in the Netherlands.

Language analysis is used in asylum procedures by governments in several countries, including The Netherlands. In a language analysis the country or region of origin is established on the basis of (dialectical) characteristics of the asylum seeker's speech. An international group of linguists has responded to the use of language analysis by publishing Guidelines for the Use of Language Analysis in Relation to Questions of National Origin in Refugee Cases. Focussing on Guideline No 5 (which states that language analysis should be based on useful and reliable data), we present several factors that can interfere with reliable data, and look how existing data is evaluated by professional linguists. Our findings show that the current methods are not adequately avoiding the pitfalls, and we conclude that there is an urgent need to further develop language analysis.

This paper presents the results of research of conflict management of 96 two-year-old and three-years-old children from Antillean, Moroccan and Dutch backgrounds and their teachers in multi-ethnic childcare centres. The focus is on the children's verbal strategies to resolve their conflicts and on the way the teachers intervene. The quantitative results relate to differences between the children in the amount and duration of the conflicts and to the use of these verbal strategies. In addition, it is investigated if the teachers' interventions differ for the ethnic groups. The use of verbal strategies is further analysed qualitatively.

This article shows how dominant negative stereotypical ideas of 'straattaal' and its speakers are constructed and reproduced. The article also shows how, within particular contexts, these ideas may be subject to renegotiation. Data for this article were collected during fieldwork in Amsterdam-East; they consist of selected fragments from interviews with a youth worker and observations of interactions between this youth worker and 'straattaal' speaking youngsters. The analysis of the data shows that the prominence of the negative stereotypical ideas held by the youth worker varies across interactional situations. The value and interpretation of 'straattaal' is highly context-dependent and the use of 'straattaal' may, therefore, signal strongly diverging social 'messages'.

Since the 1970s, the use of the Dutch preposition van in the (semi-)quotative function has been noted by several linguists and language users as rapidly increasing in informal speech. In this sense, it can be compared to the English quotative marker like, which is also used to introduce direct speech. Dutch van, however, can also occur before indirect speech. This paper concentrates on the pragmatic function(s) of this marker. The typifying function is considered to be of central relevance. Exploiting this meaning in specific contexts, additional pragmatic effects can occur, such as positive and negative politeness, focusing the quote and facilitating expressivity. Whereas (American) English like seems to have sociolinguistic connotations ('young females'), a similar connotation has not been found for Dutch van, although further sociolinguistic research is necessary. Variation in individual use has been observed: some speakers seem to avoid the use of the marker, whereas others use it frequently.