Rik Vosters

Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future

Abstract This article introduces the new Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics by situating it in the developing field of historical sociolinguistics. The landmark paper of Weinreich et al. (1968), which paid increased attention to extralinguistic factors in the explanation of language variation and change, served as an important basis for the gradual development and expansion of historical sociolinguistics as a separate (sub)field of inquiry, notably since the influential work of Romaine (1982). This article traces the development of the field of historical sociolinguistics and considers some of its basic principles and assumptions, including the uniformitarian principle and the so-called bad data problem. Also, an overview is provided of some of the directions recent research has taken, both in terms of the different types of data used, and in terms of important approaches, themes and topics that are relevant to many studies within the field. The article concludes with considerations of the necessarily multidisciplinary nature of historical sociolinguistics, and invites authors from various research traditions to submit original research articles to the journal, and thus help to further the development of the fascinating field of historical sociolinguistics.

Chapter 6. Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830)

At the reunification of the Low Countries in 1815, after more than two centuries of political separation, Northern and Southern varieties of Dutch once again came into renewed and intensified contact. The language area had been split since the Northern revolt against the Spanish regime at the end of the sixteenth century, after which the North entered its Golden Age as the independent Republic of the Seven United Provinces, while the Flemish South remained under foreign control, as part of the Spanish, Austrian, and French empires. The brief reunion under the crown of William I of Orange, commonly known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1830), gave rise to a number of remarkable language guidebooks aimed at native speakers of “Flemish” Southern Dutch, setting out to teach them “Hollandic” Northern Dutch.1 Given such publications, we might be tempted to look back upon Northern Hollandic and Southern Flemish as two distinct and mutually incomprehensible languages in 1815. However, while there must certainly have been communicative difficulties among users of different spoken varieties, the actual linguistic differences in written and printed texts are minimal. The main points of divergence between North and South in the early nineteenth century are minor orthographical issues, devoid of oral connotations. This chapter will examine these orthographical issues, situate them within the sociolinguistic landscape of early-nineteenth-century Flanders, and show how apparently insignificant differences were often portrayed as represent-

The sociolinguistics of spelling: A corpus-based case study of orthographical variation in nineteenth-century Dutch in Flanders

The reunion of the Northern and Southern Low Countries under William I (1814–1830) marked the beginning of a renewed and intensified linguistic contact between the North and the South of the Dutch linguistic area. Two writing traditions usually regarded as different came into close contact, giving rise to intense spelling debates in Flanders. The Northern provinces had had an official orthography since 1804, whereas competing spelling systems existed the South. In the contemporary language debates, several orthographical features were repeatedly brought to the fore, and developed into strong markers of regional, social and religious identities. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the sociolinguistic landscape of the Southern Netherlands in the early nineteenth century, by focusing on normative publications, metalinguistic debates, and private language planning initiatives between 1814 and 1830. Special attention will be paid to the role of orthography in processes of identity formation. Furthermore, aiming to shed more light on some of the sociolinguistic principles at work, we will compare the metalinguistic discourse to actual language use, as represented in a specially compiled diachronic corpus of court files, including police reports, witness interrogation reports, and high court indictments. An analysis of the results will uncover, among other things, clear indications of an ongoing process of levelling and a gradual convergence towards Northern linguistic norms.

Chaos and Standards. Orthography in the Southern Netherlands (1720-1830)

Abstract This paper discusses metalinguistic discourse and orthographical practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the southern Netherlands (‘Flanders’). Whereas a lot is known about Dutch language standardization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, what happened after that, especially in the southern territories, is still partly uncharted territory. This contribution will examine and challenge the myths of language decline and linguistic chaos that are often associated with eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Flanders. The authors show that there was a vivid and coherent normative tradition, especially on the level of orthography, and that even a case of apparent orthographical disorder, such as the so-called accent spelling, can be counted as an instance of language standardization in the eighteenth-century southern Netherlands.