Een hypothetische conditionele vraag is een vraag waarin een hypothetische werkelijkheid wordt geschetst. Aan de hand hiervan moet een geïnterviewde een uitspraak doen over zijn/haar gedrag of...Show moreEen hypothetische conditionele vraag is een vraag waarin een hypothetische werkelijkheid wordt geschetst. Aan de hand hiervan moet een geïnterviewde een uitspraak doen over zijn/haar gedrag of gedachten wanneer deze situatie werkelijkheid zou zijn. In deze studie wordt dit type vraag geplaatst binnen bestaande theorieën over interviewstijlen en conditionele constructies. Vervolgens worden de verschillende vormen door middel van een corpusanalyse geanalyseerd en wordt een continuüm gemaakt waarin de vormen die in gesproken interviews voorkomen, zijn gerangschikt op mogelijke effectiviteit. De hypothetische conditionele vraag kan worden gezien als een conditionele taalhandeling waarbij welwillendheid van de geïnterviewde nodig is om deze te beantwoorden. De hypothese is dat hoe dichter de geschetste hypothetische situatie bij de werkelijke wereld ligt, hoe effectiever de vraag. Daarnaast is de hypothese dat een hoge mate van syntactische integratie zorgt voor een effectievere vraag. In de praktijk lijkt ontkenning van een hypothetische vraag sporadisch voor te komen en met name bij vragen die als mogelijk minder effectief zijn geclassificeerd.Show less
“Oh shit, [I have] said fuck! Oh fuck, [I have] said shit!” Brian Blessed spoke these words on an episode of Stephen Fry’s show Planet World (Fry, 2011b). Why might some people perceive this...Show more“Oh shit, [I have] said fuck! Oh fuck, [I have] said shit!” Brian Blessed spoke these words on an episode of Stephen Fry’s show Planet World (Fry, 2011b). Why might some people perceive this sentence as shocking, rude or offensive? For the simple reason that it contains swearwords. Swearing is not something one is supposed to do and this is told us in, amongst others, the Bible: “But I say unto you, Swear not at all ; neither by heaven ; for it is God’s throne : / Nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool : neither by Jerusalem ; for it is the city of the great King. / Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black” (The Bible, Mat. 5.34–36). Swearing has always been taboo (Montagu, 1967; Stapleton 289). In one of his comedy routines, the American comedian George Carlin talked about the number of swearwords in the English language compared to the total number of words in it: “There are 400,000 words in the English language, but there are seven of them you cannot say on television. What a ratio that is!” (2011; Pinker, 2008). These seven words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. As a reaction to this sketch, the US Supreme Court and the federal government established a law which could regulate speech on broadcast television and radio in the United States (Poetry Genius): if one uttered one of the ‘seven dirty –’ or ‘filthy words’ on television or radio, one had to pay a large fine. The ban has been established about thirty years ago and there is an ongoing debate on whether it should be lifted (Nighty News, 2012). What makes a word an effective swearword? “In order to be useful for the purposes of swearing, a word […] must have reference to an object possessing, or thought to possess, force or power of some kind” (Montagu 15). Many of these words refer to excrement and filth, like shit, or sexual intercourse, like fuck. Not all words can function as swearwords, “because they [lack] the acquired weight of tradition in the speech community” (Hughes, 1992:22). All swearwords are therefore emotionally charged terms (Hughes, 1992). Native speakers of English mainly use English words when they swear. Native speakers of Dutch, however, swear both in their native tongue and in English (van de Krol, 2013). Are people these days really offended when someone utters a “filthy word”? Is the perceived rudeness of swearing dependent on factors such as nationality and gender? Do British people perceive swearwords with a different level of harshness than Americans? How do their results compare to people who are native speakers of Dutch? These are questions which this thesis would like to answer.Show less
Food and eating habits are good indicators of wider social changes and appetite for multi-ethnic eating can be perceived as one step forward to accepting and understanding the meaning of diversity....Show moreFood and eating habits are good indicators of wider social changes and appetite for multi-ethnic eating can be perceived as one step forward to accepting and understanding the meaning of diversity. In migration studies, the socio-historical analysis of the relationship between migrants and food practices provides a fresh perspective on the cultural encounters between communities. The aim of my research is to explore the private space of the Dutch eating habits and the more or less successful integration of foreign kitchens. In detail, this paper looks at how and to what extent have foreign cuisines, especially the Indonesian and Moroccan, affected the Dutch eating culture from 1950 until 2000. The results show trends of appropriation of culinary knowledge and adoption of culinary authenticity.Show less
This study focuses on the variation in pronunciation of 18 Dutch loanwords. These loanwords know variation in a vowel or consonant, or in their stress pattern. With the help of a questionnaire and...Show moreThis study focuses on the variation in pronunciation of 18 Dutch loanwords. These loanwords know variation in a vowel or consonant, or in their stress pattern. With the help of a questionnaire and wordlist, the varying pronunciation forms of these Dutch loanwords were analysed. By studying the origin of these loanwords, it became evident whether the donor language influenced the pronunciation. It became clear that French is the most influential donor language with regards to the pronunciation. Correlations with sex, age, region, educational level, and dialect proficiency were also studied to find any patterns. The social variables sex and educational level influenced the choices speakers made for a certain pronunciation form the most.Show less
The results of this research show that female participants have more positive attitudes towards English loanwords than male participants. Female participants were consistently more positive...Show moreThe results of this research show that female participants have more positive attitudes towards English loanwords than male participants. Female participants were consistently more positive regarding statements 1, 2 and 3 or, respectively, this is an ordinary Dutch sentence, the use of [loanword] is appropriate in this sentence and I would also make use of this sentence as can be found in Figure 1. Furthermore, there is significant correlation at the 0.05 level between both statement 2 and statement 3 and gender, which means that female participants have scored significantly higher than male participants for these statements. The results of this research also suggest that the mean scores of the participants become consistently lower when age increases for each of the statements. Figure 2 shows that the mean scores for the statements mentioned above consistently decrease when ages of the participants increase. These data suggest that older participants have more negative attitudes towards loanwords than younger participants. In furthermore, there is significant negative correlation at the 0.05 level between the statement I would also make use of this sentence and age. This implies that the attitudes towards using these loanwords are significantly more negative when the ages of the participants increase. This research indicated that most participants do not prefer alternative words to the used loanwords. Table 11 (in section 4.3) indicates that crash is the loanword with the most preferred alternatives as it is preferably replaced by ongeluk and neerstorten, according to nine and ten participants, respectively. Table 11 also indicates that seven participants prefer vraaggesprek to interview, six participants prefer behaald or gepresteerd to gescoord and five participants prefer peiling(en) and voorlopige uitslagen to exit polls. Preferred alternatives to the other loanwords were only provided by four participants or less, and are therefore not widely supported among the participants. In addition, the majority of the loanwords (all except crash) are catachrestic. Furthermore, the results of this research suggest that the participants generally consider that the used loanwords are more precise than other Dutch words. The second favoured reason is that participants consider that the used loanwords sound better regarding pronunciation, which can be found in Table 12.Show less
