Negotiating Address in a Pluricentric Language: Dutch/Flemish

Dutch is a pluricentric language: in Europe, it is spoken in two different countries (the Netherlands in the north and Flanders, Belgium, in the south) with differing linguistic norms. Vismans investigates what happens when the northern and southern Dutch address systems meet. His data come from in-depth radio interviews between Dutch journalists and Flemish academics. In a qualitative analysis, he tracks the development of the relationship between the two speakers and their use of address forms, as well as other markers of (in)formality. The analysis also takes into account other possible factors affecting the interaction (age, gender, residence in the other country) and pays special attention to speakers’ commentary on the variation between familiar and formal second-person pronouns.