Recent Sociolinguïstisch Onderzoek in Vlaanderen

In the introduction of this paper the author discusses the relevance of sociolinguistic research for Belgium. In this respect he mentions the problems of the pacification between the language communities in the Brussels area and the relation between dialect and standard language in Flanders. In this paper he mainly deals with the latter problem which is discussed along the following lines: a. Who speaks in Flanders what variety (dialect or standard Dutch) to whom and when? (cf Fishman; research by Meeus and Geerts, Nootens and Van den Broeck). b. What attitude do the Flemish show towards the Dutch used by the Flemish as compared to the Dutch used by the Dutch? What do they eventually reject in the Dutch as used by Dutch speakers? (Attitu-des, cf. Lambert & Giles, research by Geerts, Nootens and Van den Broeck and by Deprez). c. Problems of standardisation ("the long road to the standard Dutch") illustrated by some concrete lexical and pronominal (jij-gij) variables, ("linguistic insecurity", cf. Labov; research by Deprez and Geerts in Kortrijk-Poperinge). d. The relation between the dimension of dialect/standard language and the code-theory of Bernstein; research by Van den Broeck of the syntactic complexity in the actual use of both standard language and dialect by workers and middleclass in Maaseik (Bernstein, Labov, Ammon).