The colour of Dutch: Some limits and opportunities of identifying Dutch ethnolects

Many studies in recent years identify and discuss Dutch ethnolects. Generally this work takes linguistic phenomena as directly reflective of speakers' ethnic identity. But if ethnicity is an inherent speaker feature, the absence of white ethnolect descriptions is difficult to explain. In this paper, therefore, I wish to judge the appeal of the notion of ethnolect against its usefulness for explaining language use. I argue that ethnolect can usefully label everyday ethnicisations of language, but that such evaluations generally compress a more complex reality in which so-called ethnolectal feat... Mehr ...