Suggests that a sociopragmatic approach to the study of forms of address may shed new light on address behavior in general and on the use of forms of address in French and Dutch in particular. "Form of address" is used to encompass not only second-person singular pronouns, but also other devices that can be employed to make reference to…

Gives a short overview of the historical development of various aspects of the linguistic situation in Belgium. Particular focus is on knowledge and use of the varieties of French and Dutch in Brussels and on the educational system. Attention is also given to attitudes toward the language and language varieties and to aspects of language contact.…

Explores relationships between standard language and arithmetic-test performance and a range of language-related family characteristics in the Netherlands. The sample consists of 7730 pupils from nearly 700 primary schools. The main question is whether pupils who use standard Dutch perform better than pupils from another language variety, such as…

While the concepts of language continuum and diglossia are widely cited and discussed, they remain generally vague and are used in different ways by different linguists. Recent sociolinguistic research on Dutch-speaking Belgium provides a framework for examining the two concepts, a context for proposing a theoretical definition for language…

When analyzing data concerning interlanguage variation and discourse domain, it appears that learners may exhibit more control in their work-domain than in their life-story domain. Data were collected on the Dutch-French interlanguage of two university economics students to investigate the relation of domain to variation in utterances. (Author/…