Acquiring regional and national stereotypes: Language attitudes of children and adolescents in the Dutch-German border region

Renzel, A.; De Vogelaer, G.

Abstract

Even though adolescence is well-known to be a key period for the acquisition of both language-internal variation and foreign languages, there seems to be little research on how attitudes develop during that period. This study tries to mend this gap in our knowledge by using a speaker evaluation experiment, in which both the national languages spoken in the Dutch- German border region (Dutch, German) and local dialects (Nedersaksisch, Niederdeutsch) were evaluated to get insight in the attitudinal landscape in 8 to 15-year-olds living in the area. Our results show that children at about the age of 12 enter a period in which attitudes change considerably. While Low Saxon is evaluated more clearly as a solidarity variety in the Netherlands than Low German in Germany, the association between dialect and solidarity grows stronger with age in both countries, signalling an increasing sensitivity to the covert prestige associated with the local variety. In addition, Dutch children grow an awareness of Standard German as a prestige language, whereas German children increasingly evaluate Standard Dutch as a solidarity variety, mirroring prevalent stereotypes of the neighbouring country. On a more abstract level, attitudes seem to evolve from unidimensional to more complex constructs.