Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis investigates German-English and Dutch-English codeswitching in conversations between strangers. The aim was to grasp speakers’ perceived norms towards using English in German and Dutch...Show moreThis thesis investigates German-English and Dutch-English codeswitching in conversations between strangers. The aim was to grasp speakers’ perceived norms towards using English in German and Dutch speech. In order to do so, this study draws comparisons between German and Dutch speakers’ codeswitching, as well as compares codeswitching towards strangers to previous findings on codeswitching amongst members of specific communities. The dataset consisted of spoken data from the German and Dutch version of the TV programme First Dates. Over 600 codeswitches from 74 German and 99 Dutch speakers were analysed. The analysis examined structural elements (e.g. word category) as well as semantic elements of the switch (translation equivalence). In addition to this, the analysis considered speakers’ sociolinguistic features (age, gender, etc.) to see how widespread codeswitching is amongst various speaker types. The findings include that speakers do not engage in “creative” switching (i.e. new formations regardless of standard English grammar) while communicating with strangers, in contrast to codeswitching between community members. Overall, Dutch speakers switched more often and the word categories of switches were more diverse than German speakers. This is likely due to the higher level of English exposure in the Netherlands. Moreover, accommodation in codeswitching (i.e. speakers adjust their behaviour either to emphasise similarities or emphasise differences) was correlated with whether partners wanted a second date. This suggests that speakers managed their codeswitching to moderate social distance. The use of codeswitching was not limited to specific groups (e.g. youth speakers); rather, the majority of the speakers used English expressively and functionally. These findings imply that codeswitching is generally perceived as acceptable in German and Dutch.Show less
Elements of English have been infiltrating Dutch casual speech to great extent (Edwards, 2016). Not only loans from English can be found; elements that are not fully accepted into the language, but...Show moreElements of English have been infiltrating Dutch casual speech to great extent (Edwards, 2016). Not only loans from English can be found; elements that are not fully accepted into the language, but that are merely a replacement of English elements for Dutch words, are also present in Dutch. This phenomenon (called code-switching) has been described by various researchers already, such as in Clyne (1987), and more specifically in Dutch by scholars such as Zenner and Geeraerts (2015). However, none of the existing studies have researched the grammatical structure of codeswitching to English in Dutch, or which particular speakers of Dutch are more inclined to use codeswitching. This report investigated whether there are patterns to be found in the use of codeswitching to English by speakers of Dutch; specifically grammatical, semantic and sociolinguistic patterns. The database for this research consisted of a Dutch TV programme called “First Dates” as a primary source for instances of codeswitching, for it contains casual Dutch conversations in an unscripted setting. In total, 421 instances of codeswitching to English were found in the dataset and analysed in terms of length, word category, semantic field, intentionality, creativity and pronunciation. The speakers’ sociolinguistic features, i.e. age, gender, social class and sexual preference, were also included in the analysis. Among other things, the speakers showed a tendency towards short codeswitches in various semantic categories and most of the codeswitches were intentional and uncreative in their structure. Additionally, speakers belonging to youth and gay communities were found to codeswitch very often, whereas social class or gender did not seem to affect the speakers’ codeswitching behaviour. Implications that can be interpreted from the results are the following: the elements of English seem to be integrated into Dutch speech to great extent; generally, unintentional codeswitching may be used to relate to cultural phenomena; and intentional codeswitching is possibly used in a conversational manner. Moreover, socio-pragmatic motivations for codeswitching is likely to involve constructing identity or indexing membership of a cultural subgroup. Hence, these patterns assist in providing a deeper understanding of codeswitching to English, i.e. what kind of tendencies there are on structural, semantic and socio-pragmatic levels, and, more generally, day-to-day language use of speakers of Dutch.Show less
This BA thesis talks about online fanship and language usage on the online forums of the footballclubs Wydad and Raja, Casablanca. It argues that different languages are being used depending on the...Show moreThis BA thesis talks about online fanship and language usage on the online forums of the footballclubs Wydad and Raja, Casablanca. It argues that different languages are being used depending on the content of the message.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Nederlandse taal en cultuur (BA)
closed access
De Decker and Vandekerckhove (2012) have researched the presence of English in the chatspeak of Dutch-speaking youths, which was considerable. Nonetheless, most of the English that was...Show moreDe Decker and Vandekerckhove (2012) have researched the presence of English in the chatspeak of Dutch-speaking youths, which was considerable. Nonetheless, most of the English that was intentionally used in their corpus consisted of only one or two words. In a similar corpus with myself as the central chatter I found many more multi-word code-switches. These code-switches can be accounted for as an in-group identity practice for adolescents who construct a gay identity. A quantitative analysis shows that in the conversations between those chatters code-switches to English are used far more often than in conversations where one of the chatters does not construct a gay identity. Next, discourse analysis shows that chatters who construct a gay identity associate English with ‘gay coolness’. Using a conversation-analytical approach, I will then show that multi-word code- switches to English are used to activate ‘gay-cool’ connotations.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
2014-08-31T00:00:00Z
This thesis investigates the word order and adjectival agreement patterns in French- Dutch code switched DPs. It examines the predictions made by two theoretical frameworks: the Minimalist Program ...Show moreThis thesis investigates the word order and adjectival agreement patterns in French- Dutch code switched DPs. It examines the predictions made by two theoretical frameworks: the Minimalist Program (MP) (MacSwan 2009) and the Matrix Language Framework (MLF) (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2009) and compares these predictions to data gathered in an elicitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. This thesis is the first study investigating the adjectival agreement in code switched DPs. The results of the experiments show no unambiguous confirmation of the predictions of either framework. However, statistical analysis of the data collected in the grammaticality judgment task showed that the MP is a better predictor for the grammaticality judgments, as sentences predicted to be grammatical by the MP were rated higher than sentence predicted to be ungrammatical by the same model. This difference was statistically significant to the 5% level. There was no significant difference in rating for the predictions of the MLF. This results of the judgment task in combination with the results of previous research highlight the importance of an integration of data from both naturalistic and experimental settings. Furthermore, the lack of unambiguous results from the grammaticality judgment task argues for an integration of other experimental methodologies, such as psycho- and neurolinguistic ones.Show less
