Taal en Tongval - Volume 70, Issue 2, 2018

In dit artikel tonen we aan de hand van kwalitatieve data aan hoe talige praktijken met sprekers en artiesten uit drie steden in de periferie van Nederland en België, namelijk Tilburg, Heerlen en Genk een lokale identiteit construeren en reproduceren en hoe op die manier het besef van lokale eigenheid tot stand komt. We laten zien dat in deze drie steden artiesten en sprekers aan de hand van geënsceneerde en gemediatiseerde taalprakijken bewust nieuwe lokale identiteiten construeren. In de drie gevallen gaat het om hybride of heterogene taalprakijken, waarbij het Nederlands of lokale dialectale elementen gecombineerd worden met elementen uit andere aanwezige (contact)talen (zoals het Surinaams of het Italiaans). Bovendien worden deze taalpraktijken in Tilburg en Heerlen, maar ook – hoewel in mindere mate – voor Genk, via parodie verspreid, versterkt en vernieuwd.

How do young bilingual speakers of current Turkish and Moroccan ethnolects of Dutch deal with phoneme contrasts that do not exist in their heritage languages and that are at the same time subject to regional and social variation in the Dutch speech community at large, such as that between Dutch phonemes /a:/ and /α/? Data from speakers from the Amsterdam and Nijmegen urban areas were analyzed and compared. Two variable properties of /a:/ and /α/ defining the phoneme pair were examined: (1) duration, and (2) place of articulation.

We found clear differences between the two urban areas (regional effect) and between the Amsterdam ethnic groups (social effect). In addition, we found variation dependent on the interlocutor (socio-stylistic effect) and the linguistic context. The main dimension of social and linguistic variation was place of articulation, length remaining the primary distinctive feature of the vowel pair. No heritage language effect was found. Young ethnolect speakers take part in existing patterns of regional and social variation.

This paper addresses the question to what extent Flemish subtitlers reproduce Belgian-Dutch colloquialisms of the spoken source text in the subtitles. Next to the official Belgian Standard Dutch language, Colloquial Belgian Dutch or tussentaal is frequently spoken on Flemish television. In this context, it is particularly interesting to investigate whether the subtitlers copy those spoken colloquialisms to the subtitles or whether they translate them into standard language. This study compares the language used in twenty television programs to the corresponding subtitles in order to verify the linguistic choices of the subtitlers. In addition, it will be examined whether the subtitles contain more lexical colloquialisms than morphological or syntactic colloquialisms, and whether the program genre influences these choices. The results reveal that Colloquial Belgian Dutch lexemes are more often reproduced in subtitles on Flemish television than morphological and syntactic colloquialisms. Furthermore, it is shown that especially the subtitles of entertainment and comedy programs contain tussentaal. Based on these results, we conclude that the demotization process in Flanders is not confining itself to the spoken registers, since it also manifests itself in certain written contexts.