Flemish

Review: L. Van Melle - '"Geen woorden duren zoals het marmer'. Maurice Gilliams: "Elias of het gevecht met de nachtegalen" & "Winter te Antwerpen". Historisch-kritische editie'. Gent: KANTL 2015. 2 delen, 656p. + 272p. ISBN 978-90-72474-93-3. € 49.00

Article about Belgian artist and printmaker Jacques Boonen (1911-1968) published on the occasion of Boonen's exhibition at Walden Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (April 19 - May 12, 2018). The article, as well as the exhibition, attempt to contribute to a new discourse on this unique and lesser known figure in Belgian and European graphics of the interbellum era.

Whoever studies the sociolinguistic literature in Flanders will quickly notice that the Flemish language situation manifests strong dynamics. Processes of dialect levelling and dialect loss have led to a functional elaboration of intermediate variations in-between the dialects and the standard (cf. Devos 2006; Willemyns 2005), but these intermediate varieties – which have been referred to as Tussentaal (‘in-between-language’), Verkavelingsvlaams (‘allotment-Flemish’) or Soapvlaams (‘Soap-Flemish’) (cf. Jaspers 2001) – are also penetrating contexts in which Standard Dutch used to be the norm. While increasingly more empirical studies (see e.g. Plevoets 2008) focus on this alleged standardisation of Tussentaal, a number of issues continue to be highly controversial. One of these is the shape of the standardisation, viz. whether one stable, clearly delineated, Brabantic-flavoured Tussentaal is emerging, as suggested in, for instance, Willemyns (2005) and Taeldeman (2008). A second issue is the question whether dialect loss is indeed one of the main determinants of the emergence and standardisation of Tussentaal  (as purported in Willemyns 2005) and, more importantly still, whether the peripheral West-Flemish dialect area, which has proven more or less resistant against dialect loss (cf. Willemyns 2008) is also resisting Tussentaal (as suggested in for instance De Caluwe 2009).
In order to gain insight in these issues, it is essential to find out how Flemish language users perceive and evaluate1 Tussentaal and standard language. At present, however, there are almost no “reliable speaker evaluation data […] to assess the degree of (implicit) communal acceptance of Tussentaal, and to access the SLI [Standard Language Ideology] – if any – which constructs and negotiates its use” (Grondelaers and Van Hout 2011a: 229). This chapter represents one of the first in-depth attitudinal investigations into Tussentaal. Building on a speaker evaluation experiment in which older and younger West-Flemish listener-judges rate Belgian Standard Dutch, Brabantic-flavoured Tussentaal and West-Flemish-flavoured Tussentaal, two hypotheses are explored. First of all, we investigate whether the strong position of the dialects in West-Flanders, and the alleged concomitant weak position of Tussentaal, translate in negative attitudes towards West-Flemish Tussentaal. Secondly, it is investigated to what extent times are “a-changing”: is Tussentaal more easily tolerated in the private conceptualisations of adolescent West-Flemings?

Introduction. This study explores health information non-sharing behaviour in everyday social settings and interactions. The novelty and relevance of the study lies in the fact that it explores a common yet understudied information behaviour, as very few studies have examined information non-sharing. Method. Forty qualitative in-depth interviews were held in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium, with adults between the ages of fifty and eighty. Analysis. A contextual framework was drawn from information studies and health information and communication research, consisting of the concepts of health orientation, information avoidance, uncertainty management, to help understand health information non-sharing. Thematic analysis was employed to identify reasons for non-sharing behaviour. Results. Seven key themes or reasons emerge for health information non-sharing behaviour; health as a non-topic, avoid being labelled as ill, individual responsibility, avoid burdening o...