De Sociolinguïstiek in het Nederlandse Taalgebied Anno 1995

This article provides an overview of the Second Sociolinguistic Conference, which was held in Lunteren (The Netherlands) from 18 to 19 May 1995. In particular, attention is focused on the topics and theories that turned out to play an important role at this conference. The article begins with a comparison between the contents of the First Sociolinguistic Conference (1991) and those of the Second Sociolinguistic Conference (1995). The papers presented are classified according to the topics they dealt with. The categories adopted in this overview are those used on earlier occasions by Muysken (1984) to assess developments in socio-linguistic research and by Van Hout, Huls & Verhallen (1991) in their presentation of the First Sociolinguistic Conference. Since any classification scheme is likely to be somewhat arbitrary, the same categorisation as in the above-mentioned two papers was used here for the sake of comparability. When the papers presented at the two Sociolinguistic Conferences are compared, it appears that 'bilingualism and language contact' and 'pragmatics, interaction, and conversation analysis' constitute the main topics in both cases. The most conspicuous change from 1991 to 1995 is a growing interest in the process of language acquisition by members of language minorities in the Netherlands and Flanders. An analysis of the papers presented at the 1995 conference, would seem to suggest that a considerable amount of sociolinguistic research is conducted without reference to a specific theory or conceptual framework. The consequences that this might have for the future of sociolinguistic research in the Netherlands and Flanders are briefly considered. Finally, a number of young sociolinguists were invited to reply to the rather provocative conclusion drawn in this article.

Published online: 24 March 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttwia.52.02cuc