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3. Examining Multilinguistic Practices
in a Peripheral Region
Social Categorization and Belonging
Leonie Cornips, Jolien Makkinga, Nantke Pecht,
& Pomme van de Weerd
Abstract
This chapter scrutinizes how current sociolinguistic research at the
Chair “Languageculture in Limburg” at Maastricht University is con-
ducted by outlining three case-studies investigating regional and social
identity construction. Makkinga reveals how processes of in/exclusion
take place through address terms in a nursing home; Pecht highlights
how a combination of social factors has in uenced language mixing in
a former coal mining community in Belgium; and van de Weerd sheds
light on how st udents at a Dutch secondary school negotiate their “multi-
ethnic” context by constructing social boundaries and negotiating the
implications of category membership. Our research is characterized by
an interdisciplinary approach, by a focus on languagecultural practices
in the periphery in the context of globalization, and by close attention
for societal concerns.
Keywords: sociolinguistics, membership categorization, language mixing,
linguistic ageing, linguistic identity construction
Introduction
In t his chapter, we w ill present current socioling uistic research at Maastricht
University that we carry out in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg.
The two provinces border each other in the Southeast of the Netherlands
and the East of Belgium, respectively.
Swinnen et al. Engaged Humanities. Rethinking Art, Culture and Public Life. Amsterdam,
Amsterdam Un iversity Press 2022 .
DOI: 10.5117/9789463724029_CH
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NAN TKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
Since Dutch and Belgian Limburg are located at some distance from the
economic and political centers in their country, i.e., the Randstad in the
Netherlands and the conurbation of Antwerp in Belgium, they are perceived
both within and outside Limburg as a peripheral region. Moreover, in Dutch
Limburg, a st rong sense of regional identity is expressed linguistica lly and
culturally. People living in Limburg consider themselves culturally quite
distinct from residents of the other Dutch regions, and they attach great
importance to speaking “their” dialects (Cornips & Knotter, 2017; Thissen,
2013, 2018). In recent years, however, the intensied global connections
and novel infrastructures such as the Internet, have changed the scope
and nature of migration movements and the way people interact with
each other (Wang et al., 2014). As a result, language use and how people
ling uistically (dis)identify w ith others in “peripheral” Limburg have become
less predictable and more complex.
Theoretical Framework
To capture the way in which people make use of the diferent linguistic
resources at their disposal for regional and social identity construction,
scholars across the elds of anthropolog y, geography, sociology, and socio-
linguistics, to name only a few, have tried to nd new analyt ical concepts in
the past decade to overcome the concept of “language” as a monolithic, xed
object. New concepts include notions such as “superdiversity” (Vertovec,
2007), “crossing” (Rampton, 2014), “transidiomatic practices” (Jacquemet,
2005), “metrolingualism” (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010), “languaging” (Møller
& Jørgensen, 2009), and “multiethnolect” (Quist, 2008). Pia Quist, inspired
by Michael Clyne (2000), characterizes the latter as a linguistic “‘something,’
a variety or style, which has developed in multiethnic urban communities
and which is associated with speakers of mixed ethnic groups” (p.44).
Whereas the rst ground-breaking studies focused mainly on linguistic
variation of young speakers in multiethnic urban areas (e.g., Kotsinas,
1998; Ganuza, 2010; Quist, 2008), similar linguistic developments can be
observed in places that are regarded as peripheral such as Limburg. Indeed,
people in the periphery have become more conscious of power diferences
between themselves and those in the center(s) through new media and their
contexts. It is, therefore, important to investigate how people in Limburg,
but also people from comparable peripheral places and regions, nd ways
to (re)shape and strengthen local and social identities through language
practices in these times of rapid social change (Cornips & de Rooij, 2018).
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
Our research at Maastricht University, situated within the research
program Arts, Media, and Culture (AMC) of the Faculty of the Arts and Social
Sciences (FASoS), can be labeled as sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics emerged
as a framework in the early 1960s, stemming from the need to contextualize
the study of language or, in other words, to study both language (in) use
and society. Sociolinguistics “attempts to establish causal links between
language and society, pursuing the complementary question of what lan-
guage contributes to making community possible and how communities
shape their languages by using them” (Coulmas, 1997, p.2). Language is
thus considered as an indispensable means for people to construct social
relations and to construct regional and social identities. Sociolinguistics is a
broad and open eld, but its theory and methods are thoroughly empirically
informed (Johnstone, 2016).
Our sociolinguistic research has four characteristics which together
make it quite unique in the Netherlands. First, our research is informed
by an interdisciplinary approach with either a more linguistic or a more
ant hropological focus. Secondly, this resea rch is geared to st udying la nguage
and cultural practices in the periphery in the context of globalization.
Thirdly, it puts societal concerns center stage in the for mulation of research
questions, and this specically pertains to the challenge of inclusion and
exclusion practices. Finally, it focuses on language practices as part of the
process of social semiosis, i.e., as the locus of regional and social identity
formation.
The basic concern of our research is to investigate how diferent actors
(individually as well as collectively) engage with power dynamics and
how they make use of linguistic resources in regional and social identity
construction. Every language user associates particular languages and
linguistic forms with specic kinds of speakers and practices within a
social, political, and economic hierarchy. People’s choices of languages and
linguistic forms is connected with ideas about and stereotypes of and by
the speakers we investigate as well as in society at large. Within AMC, we
always examine these choices empirically and in doing so our research is
an example of Engaged Humanities: it deals with pressing issues in society
at large, such as the obligatory allocation of elderly to a nursing home and
the process of (un)belonging (Makkinga, 2017), how to identify oneself
when growing up locally but being born in a migrant family with various
home languages in an isolated coal mining district (Auer & Cornips, 2018;
Pecht, 2013, 2015, 2019), and social categorization of and by students with
and without a migration background and their labeling practices (van de
Weerd, 2019). In addition, our research is interdisciplinary by tapping into
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
both the humanities and the social sciences. In order to study language
use as a social phenomenon, we make use of a wide range of theories and
methodologies found at the intersection of linguistics (both applied and
theoretical), anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Finally, we
pursue active collaboration with non-academic partners such as the Lim-
burgs Museum in Venlo (Makkinga) and the Mijnwerkersmuseum (coal
mining museum) in Eisden, Belgium (Pecht), with artists creating sound
installations that “broadcast” the narratives of the residents in the nursing
home (Makkinga),1 and with policymakers at the local level who address
issues of migrant youth (van de Weerd) and policymakers at the level of
the Province of Limburg who work on the design of policies concerning the
recognition of Limburgish as a regional language (Cornips).
Methodological Approach
Data Collection and Case Studies
The three projects described in this chapter follow the methodological
guidelines of ethnography and sociolinguistics. Ethnography is “a family
of methods involving direct and sustained contact with agents, and of
richly writing up the encounter, respecting, recording, representing at least
partly in its own terms, the irreducibility of human experience” (Willis &
Trondman, 2000, p.6). Ethnographic researchers aim to understand the
(grouping of) individuals under study by spending a prolonged period of time
with them; by rst-hand experiencing their day-to-day life, participating in
their activities, and getting to know their way of viewing their world. The
practice of ethnography is a highly reexive process that unfolds in often
unexpected d irections as it aims to take account of par ticipants’ daily lives
(O’Reilly, 2012). Sociolinguistics studies how individuals actually speak. A
well-known method is the sociolinguistic interview setting where people
are placed together to interact for some time while being recorded (Labov,
2001). In the following, we briey describe the speci cs of each case study
in terms of context, participants, and method of data collection.
Jolien Ma kkinga2 (2017) has conducted ethnographic eldwork for a period
of two years in a fairly large nursing home in the city center of Maastricht.
The majority of its residents mainly spoke the Maastricht dialect or another
1 See https://stichtinglaudio.nl/project/mia/ (accessed July30, 2019).
2 This research received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program
under grant agreement no.613465 , Meertens Institute a nd Maastricht University.
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
local dialect in addition to Dutch. Makkinga, who is not from the province of
Limburg herself, conducted participant observation at diferent times and in
diferent areas in this nursing home. She made beds, handed out food, played
games, and had many informal conversations with residents in public or
private areas. Since the boundaries in the nursing home between public and
private places are blurred, it was possible that conversations in the private
sphere were overheard by non-intended listeners. Conversations between
the researcher and the study’s participants, as well as between the residents
and sta f, were audio-recorded in diverse contexts in which Makk inga also
was a participant observer. The data were coded and transcribed in the
annotation tool Nvivo. To complement the audio recordings, she wrote
eldwork notes that focused on the context, surroundings, and nonverbal
communication taking place during the conversations. As the eldwork
covered a period of two years, many residents passed away or were diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias and therefore they could not
participate anymore.
Nantke Pecht
3
(2019) has investigated linguistic variation among speakers
of the former coal mining district of Eisden, Maasmechelen, in Belgian
Limburg (the cité). Between August2015 and July2017, she collected data by
means of several methods. First, she obt ained speech data produced when
speakers feel not being observed. To minimize the efects of observation,
she conducted in-group recordings (audio and video) in informal settings
(sociolinguistic interviews) with three groups of well-acquainted former
coal miners, all of them born and raised in Eisden-cité in the 1930s (14 male
participants, a total of some 340 min.). All data from in-group recordings
were transcribed with the linguistic annotation tool ELAN and labeled
with MOCA (Multimodal Oral Corpora Administration). In addition, she
conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with diverse members of the
community resulting in roughly 27 hours of recorded speech. She talked to
and audio-recorded 21 women born in the 1920s/30s, i.e., wives and sisters
of former miners, and seven men of the same age, as well as ten speakers
of the younger generation (children of former miners, around age 50). Most
of the interviews took place at the homes of the interviewee and had the
character of a friendly visit. Interviews were done in the language(s) the
speakers felt most comfortable with, which often was Dutch, but also Ger-
man. Furthermore, in-group recordings of female speakers in groups of
3 This project is nanced by the Netherlands Organ ization for Scienti c Research (number
322– 70–008). Fieldwor k in 2015 was ca rried out under a g rant from the DA AD (German Ac ademic
Exchange Service).
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NAN TKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
three to four participants were made. Moreover, Pecht took eldnotes and
photographs of relevant signs and cultural events. Finally, she analyzed
archive les stored by the Stichting Erfgoed Eisden to trace back the socio-
historical background of the community. The combination of these methods
allowed her to gain a more comprehensive understanding, implying that in
addition to observing the in-group speech of the men she managed to obser ve
linguistic behavior in a variety of other settings as well (see Pecht, 2019).
Pomme van de Weerd
4
has analyzed language and social practices of
secondary school students enrolled in a vocational training track in Venlo
(in the North of Limburg). She gathered data during nine months of ethno-
graphic eldwork among one group of students, during their third and fourth
year in high school, from January to June2017, and from November2017 to
March2018. The population participating in this research consisted of 35
students aged 14–17. They followed “basic vocational education” (VMBO basis
and kader). Of the 35 students, seven students had a Moroccan migration
background, ve had a Turkish migration background, and four students
had migration backgrounds in other countries (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Gabon,
the Dutch Antilles). All these students, except for two, were born in the
Netherlands. To the researcher’s knowledge, the remaining 19 students had
no migration background. Van de Weerd attended 333 classroom hours of
this group, resulting in daily eldnotes and 140 hours of audio-recordings
of classroom interaction. These data were coded and transcribed in NVivo,
leading to a collection of 265 interactions among students, and sometimes
between students and herself of teachers, in which references were made to
ethnic labels such as “Turk,” “Moroccan,” “foreigner,” or “Dutch.” Analysis of
this dataset resulted in the identication of topics and themes that students
associated with these social categories, as well as common interactional
contexts in which ethnic labels came up (see van de Weerd, 2019).
Data Analysis
In order to analyze the collected data, Makkinga used the analytical concept
of belonging, understood as referring to both an intimate feeling of being at
home in a place (‘place-belongingness’) and a discursive resource to construct
forms of inclusion and exclusion (politics of belonging) (Antonsich, 2010).
Residents related the various dialects spoken in the nursing home to diferent
places in Limburg. They would actually experience being surrounded by
others (residents, staf, visitors) who spoke the same dialect or not, and in this
nursing home context this gave rise to feelings of belonging or unbelonging
4 This pr oject was nanced by N WO, project num ber 406–12 –050, 01–11 –2016 to 31–10 –2019.
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
(Antonsich, 2010; Thissen, 2018). Residents made clear distinctions between
(groupings of) residents who spoke the dialect of Maastricht labeled “Us
Mestreechtenere” (we from Maastricht) versus speakers of other dialects in
Limburg (they from surrounding towns of Maastricht) and between the use
of dialect in Limburg versus Dutch such as “Us Limburgers” (we from the
province of Limburg) versus “they Hollanders” (people from other provinces
of the Netherlands).
Pecht primarily conducted a grammatical analysis of the speech of the
former miners. This a nalysis reveals t hat speakers use linguistic featu res that
can be associated with several “languages” such as German, the Limburgish
dialect, and Dutch.
In order to examine students’ identication and labeling practices, van
de Weerd diferentiated between labels as ethnographic facts (i.e., as the
research participants’ tool) and labels as analytic tools (Cornips, Jaspers,
& de Rooij, 2014). Next, the aim was not to determine what diferentiates
so-called Marokkanen (“Moroccans”) from Nederlanders (“Dutch people”),
but rather to understand how students constructed and negotiated the idea
of the existence of such di ferent social categories, to examine how they were
talked into reality, and given meaning, in daily interaction (Hester & Housley,
2002; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Brubaker, 2002). She elaborated on a framework
called “tactics of intersubjectivity,” developed by Mary Bucholtz and Kira
Hall (2005, 2004), which explains how “social and political relations are
engendered through semiotic acts of identi cation” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004,
p.370). This framework recognizes th ree broad types of social identi cation
practices: adequation-distinction, authentication-denaturalization, and
authorization-illegitimation. Adequation-distinction emphasizes that same-
ness, as well as diference, is a social achievement rather than an objective
and stable state of being: it is made, not found. The construction of either
similarity or distinction serves a social purpose. Although these relations
are highly complex and layered, they are often expressed through binary
terms and thereby reduce complex social relations to the one-dimensional
“us versus them.” The second “tactics,” authentication-denaturalization, is
“the construction of a credible or genuine identity and the production of
an identity that is literally incredible or non-genuine” (Bucholtz & Hall,
2004, p.385). This process of identity construction is necessarily based on
essentialist understandings of identity. Finally, authorization-illegitimation
draws on institutional or other types of authority in the legitimation, or the
structural dismissal, of identities. Later in this chapter, an interaction will
be analyzed in which the rst two “tactics” – adequation-distinction and
authentication-denaturalization – are especially salient.
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
Ethical Considerations
For her ethnographical eldwork in a nursing home, Makkinga obtained
ethical approval from the Medical Ethics Committee of Maastricht Universit y,
and the Scientic Committee of the nursing home organization. Informed
consent had to be obtained for each participant every three months. Moreo-
ver, nursing staf had to be consulted to estimate whether the cognitive
functions of residents were still good enough to participate. During her
eldwork, Makkinga found out that the consultation of nursing staf to
assess the ability of residents for research was problematic because nursing
staf and residents difered in their evaluations (see also Lehto, Jolanki,
Valvanne, Seinelä, & Jylhä, 2017). Moreover, Makkinga observed that opinions
on the cognitive functions of residents to participate in the research varied
strongly among the nursing staf. Therefore, she did not only consult the
nursing staf, but she also took the resident’s opinion and her own assessment
into account when deciding on whether or not residents could participate
in the research. The research projects by Pecht and by van de Weerd were
approved by the Ethical Review Committee of Maastricht University. All
participants were informed of the purpose of the research, and of the fact
that the researcher was recording their speech. They were given the chance
to retract permission to use their interactional data throughout the research.
The names of all participants in the three case-studies are pseudonymized
to ensure their privacy, and ctive names are used for the nursing homes.
Comparative Analyses of Situated Language Practices
By concentrating on the three case-studies mentioned above, this section
demonstrates how sociolinguistic research is conducted within the context
of the Chair in “Languageculture in Limburg” at Maastr icht University. For
each case-study, we will briey describe and analyze an example from the
data generated.
(Un)Belonging to the Nursing Home Community through Language Practices
People may encounter many di culties in their transition to a nursing home.
For instance, it cannot be taken for granted that they experience a nursing
home as a place where they belong (Boelsma et al., 2014; Makkinga, 2017).
During Mak kinga’s eldwork, residents were also faced wit h na ncial cuts
in care for the elderly by the national government. As a result, many nursing
homes in the Netherlands had to close down. The residents of Mola, a nursing
home in Maastr icht (Limburg), were transfer red to t he nearby nu rsing home
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
Leem (where the eldwork took place). Both nursing homes were part of the
same health care organization. Even though Mola was located only a few
hundreds of meters away from Leem, while residents spoke the same dialect,
the residents of the two nursing homes did not get along well. “Extract 1”
below shows how Mrs. Poem perceives the new residents from Mola when
conversing with eldworker Makkinga. Mrs. Poem had already been living at
Leem for six years at the time of recording, and she perceived herself to be a
“Maastrichteneer,” speaking the Maastricht dialect. The former residents of
Mola had been living at Leem for six months at the moment of the recording.
1 Poem: Ik zeg altied, en daan moot
mevrouw
I say always, and then Mrs. X always
has
2Poem: X altied lache, (.1) ik zeg hej zit
krapuul
to laugh, (.1) I say there is scum here
but there are
3Poem: meh hej zit te ook nette mense. also decent people here.
4Jolien: Ja. Yes.
5 Poem: Dat zal je euveral wel höbbe. Which you will see a nywhere, huh?
6 Jolien: Ja (.1) en wie zijn die nette mensen Yes (.1) and who are those decent
7Jolien: dan? people here?
8Poem: Die haol je er wel oet hoor. You can easily pick them out.
Extract 1. Interac tion between Mrs. Po em (Poem) and Makkinga (Joli en). Recording conducted in
October2015.
Mrs. Poem made a sharp distinction between people originating from
Leem, who are “decent” people, and people originating from Mola, whom
she labels “krapuul” (line 2). Mrs. Poem explained when asked by Makkinga
(line 6–7) that “it is easy to pick out” the decent people in Leem (line 8).
As the research continued over time, it became clear that the distinction
made between people from Mola and Leem was related to their language
practices. The majority of the residents who originated from Maastricht
and spoke the Maastricht dialect perceived this dialect as the norm that
should be spoken within the nursing home. While residents from Leem and
Mola both spoke the Maastricht dialect, the original residents from Leem
informed Makkinga that the former residents of Mola did not adjust to the
language norms, values, and la nguage practices considered to be t ypica l of
Leem, and therefore they were evaluated as showing non-social behavior.
As Makkinga found out, language practices between residents of Mola
and Leem difered to a large extent in the use of terms of address: former
residents from Mola were used to address and being addressed by staf and
other residents much more informally, calling each other joong (“boy”) or
sjat (“honey”) (see “Extract 2” below), a practice they continued to sustain in
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
their new nursing home. The original residents of Leem, on the other hand,
were used to being addressed and also wished to be addressed as Mr. or Mrs.
followed by their surname. This they perceived as the norm, also after the
arrival of the Mola residents. As Mrs. Peeters explains in “Extract 2” below,
she knows it whether people originally belonged either to Leem or to Mola.
1 Peeters: Ze zegt geen dingen als (.1)
bijvoorbeeld
She doesn’t say things like (.1) for
example
2 (.1) sommige zeggen schatje (.1) some say honey
3 Jolien: Oja. Yeah, really.
4 Peeters: En zoiets allemaal. Ja dat was ik
niet
And such thing and all. Yes I was
not used
5 gewend. to that.
6 Jolien: Nee, (.1) nee. No, (.1), no.
7 Peeters: Enneh, zij is toch een beetje And, uh, she is bit more civilized,
8 beschaafder, eigenlijk, vind ik. Dat actually, I think. I
9 merkte ik meteen. noticed that immediately.
Extrac t 2. Interaction between Miss Peeters (Peeters) and Makkinga (Jolien). Recording conducted
in August2016.
The formal way of addressing by Mrs. Poem and Mrs. Peeters is meant
to indicate politeness, decency, and a sense of belonging to the group of
established residents already living at Leem. Many of the new residents
from Mola, however, felt excluded by the use of words such as honey and boy;
like Mrs. Poem and Mrs. Peeters, they felt these words to be too informal,
if not slightly indecent, for mutually addressing each other. This illustrates
that in subtle ways residents engage in a politics of belonging by sustaining
boundaries (Yuval-Davis, 2006) that are informed by and construed through
language practices, and that in turn contribute to residents’ sense of being
more or less entitled to belong to the place.
Linguistic Resources in the Former Mining Cité of Eisden,
Maasmechelen (BE)
A peripheral area where spea kers have been engaged in dynamic mult ilingual
practices for decades is the cité of Eisden (BE) (Auer & Cornips, 2018; Pecht,
2013, 2015, 2019). The speakers, now all men in their eighties, have socially
interacted with each other closely since their childhood. They label their
way of speaking Cité Duits (“mining district German”). Whereas Duits refers
to the “German language,” the word cité is French for “district” and refers, in
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
the given context, to a residential area for coal miners built by the mining
companies. Cité Duits developed among the locally born male children of
immigrant miners in the common miners’ district in the 1930s. It mainly
consists of features of German, Belgian Dutch, and the Limburgish dialect
called “Maaslands” spoken in this area, but it also includes lexical items
from other European languages such as Polish and French. In addition, it
contains residua ls from the local coal mining vocabulary (van de Wijngaard
& Crompvoets, 2006). Yet, Cité Duits clearly goes beyond the commonly
attested processes of lexical borrowing.
Despite signicant bodies of work within the eld of language contact
focusing on a variety of linguistic contexts (Poplack, 1980; Matras, 2009;
Muysken, 2014; Bakker, 1997) language practices within coal mining districts
have been little studied, and this is true in particular for Eisden (Auer &
Cornips, 2018; Pecht 2015, 2019; Cornips & Muysken, 2019). The fact that these
speakers are now in their eighties and grew up in a socially isolated environ-
ment makes these practices even more interesting and worth investigating
(for a sociohistorical overview, see Pecht, 2019). To give an impression of what
the language practices of the community investigated look like, an example
of the data from sociolinguistic eldwork is provided below in “Extract 3.”
1 L: godverdomme. een paar dage später Damn! A few days later came -
Came
2 kam- kam der chef-guarde. nach
schule. (…)
the head controller [mining terminol-
ogy] to our school. (…)
3 un(d) da war der mutter van, r.s. and there was the mother from R.S.
4J: ahh. ha.
5 L: der hat uns verrate. she betrayed us.
6 joa:. un dann, bei dinge, maar von Yes, and then, but things, but
vatter kezem abgetrokken. fathers’ salary was subtracted.
7 R: und dann noch, hammel gekriech, ja. and then, we got beaten up.5
8 uhh, die habe geschmeckt. those were tasty.
9 R jaa, de(r) wart gut. yes, that was good.
Extrac t 3. Interaction between J., L. and R., re cording conducted in November2015.
In this frag ment, we nd a number of linguistic features that can be associ-
ated with Dutch (godverdomme), German (Schule, Hammel), the Maaslands
dialect (wart, 3. person singular past tense “to be”), and French (guarde,
kezem, coming from quinzaine). In a similar vein, speakers use pronominal
5 D ue to the nature of t he speech (unstr uctured i nformal sp oken language), liter al transl ation
into Eng lish does not alwa ys work; in these i nstances , a slightly less l iteral tra nslation is prov ided.
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
forms that are not found in Dutch but do exist in German (der, 3. person
singular), and word-internal mix ture, for example in dage (“days”). In the latter
case, the nal syllable ge- is a stop, and it is realized according to German
phonology whereas the initial syllable corresponds to Dutch dagen (com pa re
German Tage). Final n-deletion in words such as verrate und habe, on the other
hand, is rather typical of spoken Dutch/Maaslands. What we see here is that
boundaries between two or more varieties are not clear-cut. In other words,
the speakers mix the languages to such a degree that it is often impossible to
identify the source language of the clause. Thus, grammatical constructions
are not xed but negotiable, and they may reect fuzzy boundaries.
The preliminary ndings by Pecht (2019) suggest that Cité Duits is only
spoken by men who grew up in Eisden-cité in the 1930s. Women of the same
generation do not speak it, although they are as multilingual as the men,
as illustrated in “Extract 4”:
1 F: Wat is uw moedertaal? (…) What is your mother tongue?
2 L: Ja, wat ís mijn moedertaal? Ik ben in Yes, what is my mother tongue? I
3 België geboren, dat zal wel eh was born in Belgium, thus it must
4 Nederlands zijn, maar eh, mijn eh be Dutch, but my parents were
5 ouders waren Italiane(n), dus eh, Italians, so primarily Italian
6 primer het Italiaans ook wel. Ik weet as well. I don’t know. (Pause)
7 het niet. [Pauze] En eigenlijk, Frans Actually, we also spoke a lot of
8 hebben we ook veel gesproken in huis French at home since my brother
9 met mijn, mijn broer is in eh Charleroi was born in Charleroi6 and went to
10 gebore, dus daar ging hij ook naar school there before they moved to
11 school, eer dat ze naar hier kwamen, this place. Therefore, we often
12 Frans gesproke. Het was een beetje spoke French at home. It was a
13 alles. En dan, eh, mijn schoonzuster little bit of everything. And then,
14 was een écht Italiaanse, en die kont, my sister-in-law was a ‘real’ Italian
15 toen ze naar hier kwam alléén and she spoke only Italian when
16 Italiaans, dus met haar werd ook weer she moved here. With
17 Italiaans gesproke. En zo, ‘t is een her, we spoke Italian. All in all, it was
18 beetje een mengelmoes geweest. a bit of a mishmash.
Extrac t 4. Interview between Nantke Pecht (F=Fieldworker) and Lena (L), conducte d in
September2015.
As this example shows, Lena (age 80), daughter of a miners’ family that
originated from the Italian-Slovenian border region and married to a former
Italian miner from Modena, hesitated when being asked about her mother
tongue and she repeated the question (“What is my mother tongue”?). She
6 Charleroi is situated in the French-speaki ng part of Belgium.
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
then went on to explain that it is supposed to be Dutch, but the reality is a
diferent one: she grew up speaking French, Italian and Dutch. Furthermore,
as she reported during the interview, she picked up bits and pieces of the
local dialect. As illustrated by these t wo extracts, speakers from this former
mining district, both men and women, grew up highly multilingual. While
women mainly seemed to switch between the diferent language varieties,
the language use of the men exhibits such a high degree of mixture that often
the boundaries between language A, B, and C have completely disappeared,
leading to what the speakers themselves refer to as Cité Duits.
Social Categorization by Students in a School Context
About half of the students in section “4b” of “South High School” had a
migration background. These adolescents were confronted with diversity on
a daily basis through their contact with (and in many cases, personal a li-
ation with) people, goods, information, languages, and cultures perceived
as originating in other places. Although almost all students were born in
the Netherlands, those with a migration background frequently labeled
themselves Tur k (“Turk”), Marokkaan (“Moroccan”), and/or buitenlander
(“foreigner”), while calling others (but not themselves) Nederlander. They
constructed these categories as self-evident, naturally distinct kinds of
people. The following “Extract” and its analysis illustrates how students
engaged in such identi cation practices, and thus how the tactics of in-
tersubjectivity played out in ordinary conversation among students. The
transcribed conversation took place between Nikki (age 16, labeled herself
Nederlander), Amira and Dounia (both age 15, labeled themselves Marok-
kaan), Hatice and Meryem (both age 15, labeled themselves Turk). These girls
were sitting together, waiting for the bell to mark the end of class, while
discussing two common acquaintances (who were not classmates). The
researcher was sitting nearby but did not participate in the conversation.
1 Nikki: wie valt er nou op een wannabe who would ever be into a
2 Turk? Asjeblieft wannabe Turk? (.) please
3 Amira: is hij Turk? is he Turk?
4 Dounia nee ( ) ze is Algerijn no ( ) she is Algerian
5 Nikki ja daarom (.) hij doet de hele tijd yes that’s why (.) he always
6↑e ↑e ↑e ↓e dan begint ie
helemaal
does ↑e ↑e ↑e ↓e then he starts
7 Turks te praten zogenaamd speaking Turkish supposedly
8 Amira wat de [fa:k] what the [fu:ck]
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NAN TKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
9 Dounia [o hij] is een wannabe Turk [o he] is a wannabe Turk
10 Nikki ja daarom yes that’s why
11 (1.2) (1. 2 )
12 Amira hij is alles wannabe heh heh he is wannabe everything heh heh
13 Dounia ja wannabe Marokkaan, wannabe
Turk
yes wannabe Moroccan, wannabe
Turk
14 Hatice wat is ie nou eigenlijk? so what is he really?
15 Dounia hij is Pakistaans he is Pakistani
16 Nikki dan kan hij toch geen Turks? then he can’t speak Turkish right?
17 (1. 5) (1.5)
18 ((iedereen praat 1.5” door elkaar)) ((all speak for 1.5”))
19 Meryem hij praat gewoon (.) he just speaks (.)
20 hij zegt alleen die scheldwoorden he only says those swear words
Extract 5. Nikki, Amira, Dounia, Hatice and Meryem in informal conversation before the start of
class. Recording conducted in June2017.
In “Extract 5,” two tactics of intersubjectivity can be clearly distinguished.
By introducing the term “wannabe Turk” in lines 1-2, Nikki calls into exist-
ence the possibility of a “real Turk.” She thereby engages in the “tactic of
intersubjectivity” authentication-denaturalization (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004).
She denaturalizes the identity supposedly presented by someone who used
language that – in the girls’ eyes – is incongruent with his category. The
students assumed that, underneath any potential “fake” identity, there
is always an objective and “true” membership to be uncovered. This is
illustrated by Hatice’s question in line 14: “what is he really”? At the same
time, Nikki engages in the tactic of adequation-distinction: by distin-
guishing herself from this “inauthentic” individual, she can (implicitly)
present herself as authentic, as on a par with the other participants in
the conversation.
It occurred very frequently that these students discussed other in-
dividuals who they, at some point in the conversation, would label as
member of a certain category. They treated category membership as a
given and discussed it with an air of naturalness and commonsense, and
furthermore as a rich source of information. Identication with ethnic
categories in this peer group was much more complex than suggested
by their essentialist terms, however. Although most students did not
hesitate overtly to label themselves “Turks,” “Moroccans,” or even “foreign-
ers,” they also explicitly dis-identied with Moroccans in Morocco and
Turks in Turkey. These categories were thoroughly embedded in their
local context: people labeled themselves and others on the basis of their
(family’s) migration history, but the labels came to be associated with
characteristics that had little to do with the country they referred to.
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
Instead, when discussing Turken , Marokkanen, or buitenlanders, students
often mentioned dress style, physical appearance, having a good sense
of humor, or being generous. Labels functioned to engage in local, intra-
national categorization.
Furthermore, as can also be seen from “Extract 5,” students used labels
to construct a local social hierarchy, in which the categories Turk , Ma rok -
kaan and buitenlander had status (van de Weerd, 2019). This local prestige
led to the possibility of “wannabes.” This represents a striking reversal
of particular discourses in Dutch society that exclusively problematize
people with migration backgrounds (Bouabid, 2016). This overt reversal
of categories’ social status may well be seen as the students’ commentary
on, and resistance to, the stigmatization they experience in much popular
discourse.
The Added Value of the Three Case-Studies
In the three interdisciplinary projects discussed in this chapter, societal
concerns are center stage in the formulation of the research questions. More
speci cally, they address the challenge of inclusion and exclusion practices,
as well as regional and social identity constructions in a nursing home, in
a former coal miners’ district, and in a peripheral region school. What is
more, they study individuals in diferent communities and in diferent
stages of life: older people in a nursing home, retired coal miners in a cité,
and teenagers in a classroom. In all three contexts, communication is
increasingly determined by both societal and individual multilingualism
rather than by monolingualism, and linguistic practices of today’s speakers
involve the use of features that can be associated with several linguistic
resources, as illustrated most in Pecht’s project. By analyzing seemingly
ordinary, day-to-day conversations against a background of ethnographic
knowledge about participants and their context, one can observe how
diferent kinds of identities are invoked and put to work. The teenagers
in van de Weerd’s project conjured up a social universe in their everyday
classroom interactions, in which they discussed ethnic category membership
as being all but stable or straightforward. As such, their negotiation shows
that “identities” may take on specic new meanings all the time, and that
social boundaries are created, maintained, and shifted in interaction. By
problematizing processes of identication, and examining the meaning
of labels in their context of use, we can avoid over-simplifying social op-
positions. Makkinga also shows how social and local identities are invoked
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEER D
through language practices, and how the use of specic terms of address
contribute to a sense of (un)belonging. As such, these projects contribute
to the research efort within the context of the Chair in “Languageculture
in Limburg” by shedding light on the local particularities and situational
elements that shape the experience of people in a region perceived as
peripheral, but which is also afected by processes of globalization in its
own ways (cf. Wang et al., 2014).
Conclusion
Once people from diferent sociocultural backgrounds will begin to move
through space, they will also take their linguistic knowledge with them,
and share and alter it together with those they encounter along the way.
The contemporary reality of linguistic interaction encompasses a vast
array of linguistic resources, ranging from the alternating use of several
linguistic varieties to all sorts of language mixing. To examine how language
practices and the choice for particular linguistic varieties and forms are a
resource for identit y formation, we rel ied on a combination of methodologies:
ethnographic eldwork completed with participant observation, informal
conversations and audio recordings, and sociolinguistic interviews in the
more language-oriented research.
Al l our case-studies illustrate that speakers dea l with li nguistic resources
and social realities in creative ways. The research conducted by Makkinga
shows that processes of inclusion and exclusion by residents of a nursing
home take place through language practices, and through terms of address
in particular, resulting in experiences of (un)belonging. Pecht’s research
highlights how a combination of social factors has inuenced language
choice and mixing within a former coal mining community in Belgian
Limburg. Van de Weerd’s project demonstrates that the efects of globaliza-
tion are recognizable in regions perceived as peripheries. Her analysis of
language use in daily interactions among students at a school in the North
of Limburg (NL) sheds light on the ways these students negotiate their
“multi-ethnic” context by constructing social boundaries and negotiating
the implications of category membership.
All three projects reveal how (groups of) individuals (dis)identify with
others through specic language, labeling, and addressing practices. As
such these practices constitute a robust social semiotic system that allows
actors to express a full range of social concerns in a given community.
EXAMINING MULTILINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN A PERIPHERAL REGION
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About the Authors
Leonie Cornips holds the Chair Languageculture in Limburg at the Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, and she is a senior-researcher
at NL-Lab, Humanities Cluster (KNAW). She publishes on language variation,
multilingualism, bidialectal child language, regional construction through
language practices, and, very recently, she is making a plea for an animal
turn in linguistics.
Jolien Makkinga was a PhD candidate at Maastricht University and the
Meertens Institute (Humanities Cluster, KNAW). Her research focuses on
the linguistic construction of belonging in a nursing home. She presented
LEONIE CORNIPS, JOLIEN MAKKINGA, NANTKE PECHT, & POMME VAN DE WEERD
her work at several national and international conferences and she published
in the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford.
Nantke Pecht obtained her PhD at Maastricht University (2021) on the
morphosyntactic and sociolinguistic aspects of a moribund coal miners’
language. Nantke holds a MA in European Linguistics and a BA in Spanish
literature, language and media studies (major), and English and American
Studies (minor) from the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. She is
enrolled in the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT) and is a
member of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Algemene Vereniging
voor Taalwetenschap (AVT), and the Limburgish-section of Levende Talen.
Pomme van de Weerd is a linguistic anthropologist. She obtained her
PhD at Maastricht University, with a fellowship from Université Libre de
Bruxelles, with a dissertation based on linguistic ethnographic eldwork
among secondary school pupils in Venlo, the Netherlands. Using concepts
from linguistics, anthropology, conversation analysis, and membership
categorization analysis, she analyzes pupils’ self- and other-categorization
in ethnic terms.