Much ink has been spilled over the question how the pronoun u'you' came to be used as a polite form of address in subject function in the history of Dutch, and the role epistolary forms of address played in it. What has so far escaped attention is the form that verbal agreement takes with u. In present-day Dutch, there is variation in verbs that have distinct second and third person forms. The current paper traces the diachronic development of this variation in a corpus of letters from the 17th and 18th centuries and argues that the present-day variation is the result of top-down and bottom-up tendencies: the downward spread of upper class (written) forms of address requiring third person agreement and the initial use of the position-dependent agreement system of gij, and analogical pressure against it, from below.
This article starts from the hypothesis that destabilizing a coherent fictional world constitutes a core strategy within the ideological project of totaalproza authors. It examines how Lidy van Marissing, one of these authors, employs narrative space in her debut novel Ontbinding (1972) as a means of expressing literary and political engagement. Drawing on Zoran's model of narrative space and philosophical concepts such as Foucault's heterotopia and Aug & eacute;'s non-place, the analysis demonstrates how Ontbinding organizes its narrative world around binary oppositions-inside/outside, private/public, personal/anonymous-that are systematically undermined. This subversion generates political awareness not only among the novel's characters, but also within the reader, who is actively engaged through the textual rendering of narrative space in the montage novel. In Ontbinding, the use of space functions not merely as a reflection of Van Marissing's social vision, but as an invitation to critically interrogate one's own reality.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Bourdieusian field theory and its underlying conceptual framework. This renewed attention appears to be driven largely by the radical transformation of the literary field over the last few decades, a shift that catalysed by globalisation and digitalisation. While Bourdieu's work acknowledges socio-historical flux, sociological literary scholarship often persists in treating the field as a closed structure. This article challenges that rigidity. By employing the notion of 'translation', it seeks to expand the (infra)structural understanding of the literary field while simultaneously interrogating its systemic boundaries. Ultimately, this article aims to provide deeper insight into the internal dynamics of the literary field and to rehabilitate the role of translation within that space.
The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has profound implications for both research and education, also within linguistics. This article explores how chatbots can serve as innovative tools for the didactics of reflection about language and language use. Using concrete examples from interactions with LLMs, it demonstrates how these technologies make the four perspectives on language formulated by the Dutch Meesterschapsteam Nederlands (2016, 2018) - language as a system, as an individual phenomenon, as a social phenomenon, and as a historical phenomenon - accessible in new and interactive ways. At the same time, working with LLMs in the classroom highlights the fundamental differences between human language processing and the computational approach of LLMs, including criticisms of the nature of their `understanding' and `creativity'. The article argues for a critical integration of chatbots into Dutch language and literature education, with an emphasis on `conscious literacy' and experiential learning, and discusses the ethical considerations as well as the shifting role of the Dutch studies scholar in this new landscape.
'A peculiar type of finite verb' is what Van den Toorn (1984: 12) calls the imperative mood. A finite verb is, after all, a verb that agrees with its subject and indicates whether an event or situation is simultaneous with or prior to the moment of speaking. However, in the imperative mood, the subject of the sentence is not expressed, and according to traditional grammar, in Dutch the imperative mood does not have tense. This contribution focuses on the form of the imperative mood that is identical to the form of the first person singular present tense. In the case of homophone verbs, this form sounds the same as the verb form in second and third-person singular present tense, but it differs in orthography. This poses a significant challenge for spellers, as even for experienced spellers, homophones cause errors (Sandra et al. 2001). We analyzed the treatment of the imperative mood in the legal educational framework and in the most commonly used methods for secondary education, and in a large-scale data analysis (see Reuneker & Dunning 2023), we compared the errors made in the spelling of the imperative mood with that of regular homophonic finite verbs. Based on this analysis, we show that Dutch secondary-school students at all levels and in all grades have more difficulty in spelling the imperative mood than in a regular finite verb. Accordingly, we offer advice for improving education materials.
This paper presents a creative writing approach that is aimed at critical literacy with regards to large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. We propose to connect creative writing with digital literacy on the one hand, and 'literary literacy' on the other. By appealing to students' literary imagination, we teach them to engage creatively and critically with (dominant discourses surrounding) LLMs, empowering students to understand the (im)possibilities of such models. Simultaneously, our approach allows students to gain insights into literary traditions, forms, and conventions, and enables them to challenge or play with such conventions. We first offer a theoretical foundation for our educational vision, introduce a Writing Model and situate it within current debates about digital literacy and creative writing in language/literature education in the Netherlands. We then report on our experiences with a Bachelor's course in Creative Writing at Utrecht University, which focused on LLMs.
This article provides a comparison of happiness discourses in walking stories published in the Van Oorschot Terloopsseries by millennial and non-millennial authors. In order to chart how authors reflect on the interrelatedness of walking and well-being in their walking narratives, we have analysed three stories by millennial-writers - Omwegen (2023) by Thomas by Maartje Wortel - and three by non-millennials: De beloning (2022) by Stine Jensen, Lentehonger (2022) by Sander Kollaard and Je keek te ver (2022) by Marjoleine de Vos. The comparison not only shows that dominant discourses - as articulated by Hyman (2014a) - are strongly recognizable in all travel stories, but also exposes similarities and differences between generations. The Terloopstitles are consistent with Demeyer and Vitse's (2021) thesis that the literature of millennials expresses an affective crisis more strongly than that of writers of earlier generations.
Summer 2021. The discovery of thousands of handwritten pages by LouisFerdinand Celine is causing quite a stir, both in France and beyond. The author of Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and Mort a credit (1936) is, after all, known as a scandalous writer, whose reputation is marked by his anti-Semitic pamphlets from the years 1937-1941. The personal and social backgrounds of Celine's thought has been the subject of much speculation. This article places not the author in the foreground but the reader. How did Dutch authors and critics respond to `the problem Celine': an important writer who held abject views and hurled them into the world with great verbal bravado?
On social media platforms, we are bombarded with small stories, which end up in unpredictable contexts with unforeseen recipients, who actively shape the narrative and become co-authors. As an effect, the unreliable narrator - once a concept reserved for literary criticism - is everywhere. I argue for an expansion of narratological frameworks to better understand the dynamics of trust and unreliability in platformed attention economies, by looking at three domains: platforms, fiction/non-fiction hybrids, and real readers. I illustrate these through the case of the short story 'Trainer' (Coach, 2016) by Pim Lammers. Through my analysis of this controversy, I explore the implications of the blurred boundaries between fictional and non-fictional narratives, with particular attention to how readers attribute moral and ideological reliability to authors, narrators, and characters. This allows me to reflect on broader societal challenges around narrative competence, media literacy, and what I call 'weaponized narrative incompetence' - the strategic misreading of stories for rhetorical purposes.
