Cover not available
Part of
Exploring Discourse Strategies in Social and Cognitive Interaction: Multimodal and cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Manuela Romano and Maria Dolores Porto
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 262] 2016
► pp. 39–77

Individual differences and in situ identity marking

Colloquial Belgian Dutch in the reality TV show "Expeditie Robinson”

| University of Leuven
ORCID logo | University Complutense de Madrid
ORCID logo | University of Leuven
Over the past decades, sociolinguists and Cognitive Linguists have shifted their attention to individual differences and intra-speaker variation (Hernández-­Campoy & Cutillas-Espinosa 2013; Barlow 2013). This chapter aims to add to this trend by conducting a bottom-up analysis of the speech of participants in the Dutch reality TV show “Expeditie Robinson”. We build quantitative profiles tracking participants’ use of two features of Colloquial Belgian Dutch (CBD): the personal pronoun gij ‘jou’ (vs. standard jij) and word-final t-deletion. We compare participants’ style-shifts in these profiles, focusing on register differences (contrasting informal and formal speech) and differences in group make-up (i.c. the absence/presence of Netherlandic Dutch participants – who typically do not use CBD). The most outspoken differences between the participants are found for group accommodation in the use of gij. Interestingly, the different levels of accommodation can be linked to the degree of strategic planning and voting of individual participants.
Keywords: Colloquial Belgian Dutch, individual language use, personal pronouns, reality TV, word-final t-deletion
Published online: 31 March 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.262.03zen
References
Agha, Asif
2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter
2007 “Introduction.” In Style and Social Identities. Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity, ed. Peter Auer, 1–21. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter and Celia Roberts
2011 “Introduction – John Gumperz and the Indexicality of Language.” Text & Talk 31(4): 381–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barlow, Michael
2013 “Individual Differences and Usage-Based Grammar.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18(4): 443–478. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berteloot, Amand
2003 “Van ‘du’ naar ‘ghi’. Waarom het pronomen ‘du’ uit het Nederlands verdween [From ‘du’ to ‘ghi’. Why the pronoun ‘du’ disappeared from Dutch].” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde 119(3): 204–217.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack
2003 Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael
1992 Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Couldry, Nick
2004 “Teaching Us to Fake It: The Ritualized Norms of Television’s ‘Reality Games’.” In Reality TV. Remaking Television Culture, ed. by Susan Murray, and Laurie 
Ouelette, 57–74. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas
2007 Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dąbrowska, Ewa
2012 “Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment”. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2: 219–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Caluwé, Johan
2002 “Tien stellingen over functie en status van tussentaal in Vlaanderen [Ten statements on the function and status of Colloquial Belgian Dutch in Flanders].” In Taalvariatie en taalbeleid. Bijdragen aan het taalbeleid in Nederland en Vlaanderen [Language variation and language policy. Contributions to the language policy of the Netherlands and Flanders], ed. by Johan De Caluwé, Dirk Geeraerts, Sjaak Kroon, Virginie Mamadouh, Ronald Soetaert, Luc Top, and Ton Vallen, 57–67. Antwerpen: Apeldoorn.Google Scholar
De Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg
2006 “Introduction.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna de Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 1–29. 
Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deprez, Kas and Guido Geerts
1975 Lexikale en pronominale standaardizatie. Een onderzoek van de ontwikkeling van het Algemeen Nederlands in West-Vlaanderen [Lexical and pronominal standardisation. An investigation of the development of a General Dutch in West-Flanders]. Leuven: KUL, Departement Linguïstiek (preprint).Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin
1992 Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2011 “Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Variation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41(1): 87–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erickson, Frederick
2011 “From Speech as ‘Situated’ to Speech as ‘Situating’: Insights from John Gumperz on the Practical Conduct of Talk as Social Action.” Text & Talk 31(4): 395–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk
2001 “Een zondagspak? Het Nederlands in Vlaanderen: gedrag, beleid, attitudes [A Sunday suit? Dutch in Flanders: behavior, policy, attitudes].” Ons Erfdeel 44: 337–344.Google Scholar
2011 “Colloquial Belgian Dutch.” In Línguas Pluricêntricas. Variação Linguística e Dimensóes Sociocognitivas, ed. by Augusto Soares da Silva, Amadeu Torres, and Miguel Gonçalves, 61–74. Braga: Publicações da Faculdade de Filosofia, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers and Peter Bakema
1994 The Structure of Lexical Variation. Meaning, Naming, and Context. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk, Gitte Kristiansen and Yves Peirsman
(eds.) 2010 Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk and Hans Van de Velde
2013 “Supra-regional Characteristics of Colloquial Dutch“. In Language and Space: Dutch, ed. by Frans Hinskens, and Johan Taeldeman, 532–556. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Giles, Howard
2001 “Speech Accommodation.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Rajend Mesthrie, 193–197. Amsterdam/New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Goossens, Jan
2000 “De toekomst van het Nederlands in Vlaanderen.” Ons Erfdeel 43: 3–13.Google Scholar
Grezel, Jan Erik
2003 “‘U’ of ‘Jij’: Wat moet je nou? [‘U’ or ‘Jij’: what is the way to go?].” In Waar gaat het Nederlands naartoe? Panorama van een taal [Where is Dutch heading? A vista of a language], ed. by Jan Stroop, 194–201. Amsterdam: Bakker.Google Scholar
Grondelaers, Stef and Dirk Speelman
2013 “Can Speaker Evaluation return Private Attitudes towards Stigmatised Varieties? Evidence from Emergent Standardisation in Belgian Dutch”. In Language (De)standardization in Late Modern Europe, ed. by Torre Kristiansen, and Stef Grondelaers, 171–191. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J.
1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J. and Dell Hymes
1972 The Etnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Haralovich, Mary Beth and Michael Trosset
2004 “Expect the Unexpected: Narrative Pleasure and Uncertainty due to Chance in Survivor.” In Reality TV. Remaking Television Culture, ed. by Susan Murray, and Laurie Ouellette, New York: New York University Press, 75–96.Google Scholar
Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel and Juan Antonio Cutillas-Espinosa
2013 “The Effects of Public and Individual Language Attitudes on Intra-Speaker Variation: A Case Study of Style-Shifting.” Multilingua 23(1): 79–101.Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A.
2013 Cognitive Linguistics. The Quantitative Turn. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus and Andrew E. Danielson
2006 “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’.” Journal of English Linguistics 32 (4): 77–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Gitte
2008 “Style-shifting and Shifting Styles: A Socio-Cognitive Approach to Lectal Variation.” In Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems, ed. by Gitte Kristiansen, and René Dirven, 45–90. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Gitte and René Dirven
2008 Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Gitte and Dirk Geeraerts
(eds.) 2013a “Contexts of Use in Cognitive Sociolinguistics”. Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics 52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013b “Introduction. Contexts of Use in Cognitive Sociolinguistics”. Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics 52: 1–4. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1966 The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington (D.C.): Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald
1999 “A Dynamic Usage-Based Model.” In Grammar and Conceptualization, ed. by Ronald W. Langacker, 91–145. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger
1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert and Andrée Tabouret-Keller
1985 Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian
2000 The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Mahwah (NJ): 
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Plevoets, Koen
2008 Tussen spreek- en standaardtaal. Een corpusgebaseerd onderzoek naar de situationele, regionale en sociale verspreiding van enkele morfosyntactische verschijnselen uit het gesproken Belgisch-Nederlands [In between spoken and standard language. A corpus-based investigation of the situational, regional and social distribution of several morphosyntactic phenomena from spoken Belgian-Dutch]. Unpublished PhD thesis, KU Leuven.Google Scholar
Plevoets, Koen, Dirk Speelman and Dirk Geeraerts
2008 “The Distribution of T/V Pronouns in Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch.” In Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages, ed. by Klaus P. Schneider, and Anne Barron, 181–210. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben
1999 “Styling the Other: Introduction.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4): 421–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Language, Social Categories and Interaction.” Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 75.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
1998 “Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities”. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 401–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Speelman, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers and Dirk Geeraerts
2003 “Profile-Based Linguistic Uniformity as a Generic Method for Comparing Language Varieties.” Computers and the Humanities 37: 317–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Street, James A. and Ewa Dabrowska
2010 “More Individual Differences in Language Attainment: How much do Adult Native Speakers of English know about Passives and Quantifiers?” Lingua 120: 2080–2094. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah
2005 “Interactional Sociolinguistics as a Resource for Intercultural Pragmatics.” Intercultural Pragmatics 2(2): 205–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
1974 The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge (MA): 
Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van de Mieroop, Dorien, Eline Zenner and Stefania Marzo
In press. “Standard and Colloquial Belgian Dutch Pronouns of Address: A Variationist-Interactional Study of Child-Directed Speech in Dinner Table Interactions”. To appear in Folia Linguistica.
Van den Toorn, Maartin
1977 “De problematiek van de Nederlandse aanspreekvormen [Issues with Dutch pronouns of address].” De Nieuwe Taalgids 70(6): 520–540.Google Scholar
Van Gijsel, Sofie, Dirk Geeraerts and Dirk Speelman
2004 “A Functional Analysis of the Linguistic Variation in Flemish Spoken Commercials.” In Le poids des mots. Actes des 7es Journées internationales d’Analyse statistique des Données Textuelles, eds. Gérald Purnelle, Cédrick Fairon and Anne Dister. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1136–1143.Google Scholar
Vandekerckhove, Reinhild
2004 “Waar zijn je, jij en jou(w) gebleven? Pronominale aanspreekvormen in het gesproken Nederlands van Vlamingen [Where have je, jij and jou(w) gone? Pronominal pronouns of address in the spoken Dutch of the Flemish].” In Taeldeman, man van de taal, schatbewaarder van de taal [Taeldeman, man of language, treasury of language], ed. by Johan De Caluwé, Georges De Schutter, and Magda Devos, 981–993. Gent: Academia Press.Google Scholar
Vermaas, Johanna
2002 Veranderingen in de Nederlandse Aanspreekvormen: van de Dertiende t/m de Twintigste Eeuw [Changes in Dutch pronouns of address: from the thirteenth to the twentieth century]. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Verschueren, Jeff
2010 “Interactional Sociolinguistics.” In Society and Language Use, ed. by Jürgen Jaspers, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 169–175. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel
1970 Languages in Contact. The Hague / Paris: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne
1999 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Willemyns, Roland
2013 Dutch: Biography of a Language. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zenner, Eline, Dirk Geeraerts and Dirk Speelman
2009 “Expeditie Tussentaal: Leeftijd, Identiteit En Context in ‘Expeditie Robinson’ [‘Expedition Colloquiual Belgian Dutch’: age, identity and context in ‘Expeditie Robinson’].” Nederlandse Taalkunde 14: 26–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zenner, Eline, Dirk Speelman and Dirk Geeraerts
2012 “Cognitive Sociolinguistics meets Loanword Research: Measuring Variation in the Success of Anglicisms in Dutch.” Cognitive Linguistics 23: 749–792. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zenner, Eline and Dorien Van de Mieroop
forthcoming). “The Social Function of English in Weak Contact Situations: Ingroup and Outgroup Marking in the Dutch Reality TV Show “Expeditie Robinson””. Submitted to Journal of Pragmatics.
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Becker, Israela
2023. Let my speakers talk: metalinguistic activity can indicate semantic change. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 0:0 DOI logo
Zenner, Eline & Dorien Van De Mieroop
2021. Chapter 3. The alternation between standard and vernacular pronouns by Belgian Dutch parents in child-oriented control acts. In Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan [Studies in Language Variation, 26], ► pp. 52 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.