Volume 10, Issue 3 - Special Issue: Metalinguistic Discourse on Multilingual Urban and Youth Speech Styles and Linguistic Practices, Issue Editors: Margreet Dorleijn and Jacomine Nortier

Dutch Straattaal is often described as a multiethnolect that is not only used among members of several different heritage groups, but also marks new identities. In this article, the focus is on the position of Straattaal among Moroccan youth, based on data from internet exchanges. The general observation is confirmed that Surinamese elements in Straattaal are used by Moroccan youth, and mixed with etymologically Moroccan elements. However, a different picture arises when studying meta-commentary by Moroccans about Straattaal. It appears that young Moroccans construct the use of lexical items from Sranan – the most salient feature of Straattaal – as something belonging to the Black community, and not as something they identify with. Thus, while Straattaal could be considered a multiethnolect on the level of actual speech, it is ideologically kept apart, and at that level much less multiethnic than is sometimes suggested.

It is assumed that there exists a multiethnolect in the Netherlands that is used by Dutch youth with different heritage backgrounds. It is lexically mainly influenced by Sranan Tongo while phonetically it is mainly influenced by a Moroccan Dutch accent. In this article, I will argue, based on metalinguistic comments given in interviews, that Moroccan Dutch youth speech in the city of Gouda departs from this conception of multiethnolect. Interviews with Moroccan Dutch teenagers there reveal that, in their youth variety, Sranan Tongo lexical items are not readily accepted and used. In addition, their perception of Straattaal differs from the perception of their Indigenous Dutch peers in Gouda. In this way, a different light can be shed on multiethnolect in the Netherlands.

Straattaal (‘street language’) used by members of various ethnic groups contains linguistic material from English and several heritage languages with relatively many Sranan words. Moroccan Flavored Dutch (MFD) is Dutch with elements from Moroccan languages on the level of pronunciation, lexicon and/or grammar. Both Straattaal and MFD can be used by young Moroccan-Dutch. The basic question is: How is the use of MFD and Straattaal by Moroccan-Dutch females perceived within the Moroccan community in CMC? Data were collected by searching posts on social media. Male and female young Moroccan-Dutch comment negatively on Moroccan girls using Straattaal. However, MFD is used too, even by the same participants, receiving little overt attention. The use of and attitudes towards youth languages by females elsewhere sometimes differ from the Moroccan-Dutch context. Examples from Algeria, Indonesia and Hong Kong show that they are used by both females and men without overt negative connotations compared to Western Europe where they seem to be used predominantly by males. A possible explanation could be that there seems to be a gender restriction for varieties used as anti-languages (Halliday 1976), while youth varieties that mark socially upward mobility can be used by both males and females.

This paper considers the relevance of studying metalinguistic comments about the embedding of Turkish infinitives in Dutch morphology. It focusses on bilingual Dutch and Turkish spoken in the Netherlands. Data of computer mediated communication (CMC) is used. The paper reports on an analysis of the (sparse) occurrence of Turkish verb embedding in Dutch and the accompanying metalinguistic comments. For this, an exploration of the internet as well as of a data set compiled form Turkish-Dutch discussion fora consisting of 1.335.592 words was conducted. I am indebted to Dirk Vet, University of Amsterdam, for invaluable help and assistance with technical issues concerning the compilation of the data corpus. Also I would like to thank Maarten Kossmann and Yaron Matras for their valuable comments. Remaining flaws are mine. A comparison is made with the reverse verbal construction in Turkish-Dutch bilingual speech (Dutch infinitives + Turkish infinitive yapmak ‘to do’). The absence of evaluative comments on the latter construction suggests it has been accepted as norm-behavior in the Turkish-Dutch community. Embedding of Turkish verbs in Dutch morphology, by contrast, is not accepted. The paper discusses the extent to which metalinguistic comment can be used as a diagnostic tool to uncover implicit norms of non-standard varieties.

The paper focuses on the manifestation of multilingual awareness (MLA) and the impact of Estonian in Russian-language blogs by ethnic Russians. MLA can be defined as “an ability to focus on linguistic form and to switch focus between form and meaning” (Jessner, Ulrike. 2014. On multilingual awareness or why the multilingual learner is a specific language learner. In Miroslaw Pawlak & Larissa Aronin (eds.), Essential topics in applied linguistics and multilingualism. Studies in Honor of David Singleton , 175–184. Wien: Springer.). The purpose is to show that metalinguistic comments form as a subcategory of metalinguistic awareness, i.e., the latter conditions the former but not vice versa. I consider not only explicit examples of metalinguistic comments, such as discussion on differences between Russian of Russia and Russian in Estonia, proficiency in Estonian, sometimes including discussions on fine points of Estonian grammar, but also implicit and more subtle examples, such as visual separation of Estonian stems and Russian inflections, playful switches from Cyrillic to Latin characters and back within a sentence or even a word. All blogs are in the Live Journal environment, a medium which combines features of stand-alone blogs and social networks. The bloggers are reasonably proficient in Estonian and work or study in a predominantly Estonian-language environment. Data comes from fifteen blogs from the period 2008–2012. The bloggers position themselves as autonomous language users and consider blogs as their private virtual space with an individual language policy. This is in accordance with the views of some contact linguists (e.g., Thomason, Sara Grey. 2007. Language contact and deliberate change. Journal of Language Contact 1. 41–62.), who consider change by deliberate decision as one of the mechanisms of contact-induced language change.

The language policy of Turkey’s state-run Kurdish television station (TRT Kurdî) allows for Kurdish-Turkish hybridity, which reflects common practice among Turkish Kurds (Schluter, Anne. 2014. Competing or compatible language identities in Istanbul’s Kurmanji workplaces? In Kristina Kamp, Ayhan Kaya, Fuat Keyman & Özge Onursal-Beşgül (eds.), Contemporary Turkey at a Glance. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local and Trans-local Dynamics , 125–137. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.) and promotes ownership among minority language speakers (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.). Nevertheless, the mixing of Turkish and apparent disregard for Kurdish language rules has led some of the target audience to reject the station (Öpengin, Ergin. 2012. Sociolinguistic situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical factors and language use patterns. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 217. 151–180.). Such attention to form, according to (Lemon, Alaina. 2002. Form and function in Soviet stage Romani: Modeling metapragmatics through performance institutions. Language in Society 31. 29–64.) is usually reserved for minority language activists and dominant language speakers whereas marginalized minority language speakers frequently focus on function. Through semi-structured interviews with twenty politically engaged Kurdish migrants of Istanbul, the current study investigated metalinguistic criticisms about the station to deconstruct perceptions of the suitability of a hybrid Kurdish broadcasting language in relation to findings from (Lemon, Alaina. 2002. Form and function in Soviet stage Romani: Modeling metapragmatics through performance institutions. Language in Society 31. 29–64.) and (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.). In contrast to (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.), participants viewed linguistic hybridity on TRT Kurdî as iconic (Irvine, Judith & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: ideologies, politics, and identities , 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.) of the Turkish state’s agenda to assimilate its Kurdish population. Furthermore, the transfer of this agenda onto a sub-group within the same in-group, TRT Kurdî’s producers, provided evidence of fractal recursivity (Irvine, Judith & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: ideologies, politics, and identities , 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.). Results call for a broadening of Lemon (2002) to allow for the inclusion of a larger portion of minority language-speaking populations whose language, similar to the Istanbul-resident Kurdish community profiled in the current study, has been deeply politicized.