Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages
-
Bertus van Rooy
and
Rias van den Doel
Abstract
The relationship between Afrikaans and Dutch cannot be captured adequately by the construct of pluricentrism. However, to deny a connection of a similar kind would leave aspects of the historical and current relationship unaccounted for. In comparison to typical pluricentric relations, such as those between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes, Afrikaans shows more differences from Dutch. This is because there were more non-native speakers contributing directly to the formation of the language, and contact between the colony and metropolis was less extensive, being eventually completely severed with the imposition of British rule on the Cape colony. It took longer for a colonial dialect to stabilise, by which time the Dutch normative reference point was removed. When Afrikaans gained linguistic independence in the early 20th century, a nationalistic agenda also militated against substantial reliance on Dutch as a reference point. However, after linguistic independence, a post-pluricentric relationship emerged, where a new appreciation for Dutch as the source of spelling and vocabulary norms assisted the standardization of Afrikaans. Furthermore, externally reciprocal relations still continue to appear in domains such as literature, and even marketing, signalling an underlying symbolic value. At present, signs of renewed approaches are emerging, although these are unlikely to influence language-internal development.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages
- On the correlation between socioeconomics and policies of languages in official contexts
- Development and the national language question: a case study
- Linguistic divergence in Bosnia: considerations about vertical and horizontal leveling
- Beliefs about language status and corpus in focus group discussions on the Ukrainian language policy
- Language attitudes, migrant identities and space
- Heavenly singing: the practice of naat and nasheed and its possible contribution to reversing language shift among young Muslim multilinguals in the UK
- Taking Queer Linguistics further: sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research
- New perspectives on endangered languages, edited by José Antonio Flores Farfán and Fernando Ramallo
- Keeping the fire alive: a decade of language revitalization in Mexico
