3.1. Letters as Loot: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch
Van der Wal et al. (2012) introduce, in their contribution, a recently-discovered collection of Dutch documents from the second half of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. These Dutch documents contain more than 38,000 commercial and private letters. Van der Wal et al, begin by presenting the background to the sailing letters, which are kept in the National Archives (Kew, UK), indicating their socio-historical linguistic value and illustrating some cases. They also reveal the problems they faced before being able to study the linguistic data in a fruitful manner. Additionally, they clarify the Letters as Loot-corpus.
Moreover, van …show more content…
One such challenge is the difficulty faced by sociolinguists in gaining access to the historical sources required. Indeed, a historical source might be unavailable or inaccessible. For example, when a sociolinguist decides to use historical sources (e.g. dairies or letters), he/she must think about the expense involved since most historical sources are not available in electronic versions. Additionally, a sociolinguist must consider whether the source is trustworthy. Likewise, he/she must consider the age of that source, the place it comes from, the motivations behind the creation of the source, and indeed, the writer him/herself. For instance, van der Wal et al. (2012:144) were disappointed by the fact that one of the senders (Cornelia) of the letters that they studied, asked another person to write the letters for her. Hence, the scribe of the letter was not its …show more content…
letters, diaries, birch-bark letters etc.) in studying sociolinguistic variation and change. That focus has entailed a brief consideration of three relevant studies. Additionally, the strengths, limitations and challenges in the use of the historical sources in studying sociolinguistic variation and change have been discussed. The conclusion is that the use of such sources plays an important role in discovering the diverse picture of sociolinguistic variation and change. Consequently, the limitations and challenges associated with this approach must not serve as obstacles to the growth and extension of the field of sociolinguistic variation and
Van der Wal et al. (2012) introduce, in their contribution, a recently-discovered collection of Dutch documents from the second half of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. These Dutch documents contain more than 38,000 commercial and private letters. Van der Wal et al, begin by presenting the background to the sailing letters, which are kept in the National Archives (Kew, UK), indicating their socio-historical linguistic value and illustrating some cases. They also reveal the problems they faced before being able to study the linguistic data in a fruitful manner. Additionally, they clarify the Letters as Loot-corpus.
Moreover, van …show more content…
One such challenge is the difficulty faced by sociolinguists in gaining access to the historical sources required. Indeed, a historical source might be unavailable or inaccessible. For example, when a sociolinguist decides to use historical sources (e.g. dairies or letters), he/she must think about the expense involved since most historical sources are not available in electronic versions. Additionally, a sociolinguist must consider whether the source is trustworthy. Likewise, he/she must consider the age of that source, the place it comes from, the motivations behind the creation of the source, and indeed, the writer him/herself. For instance, van der Wal et al. (2012:144) were disappointed by the fact that one of the senders (Cornelia) of the letters that they studied, asked another person to write the letters for her. Hence, the scribe of the letter was not its …show more content…
letters, diaries, birch-bark letters etc.) in studying sociolinguistic variation and change. That focus has entailed a brief consideration of three relevant studies. Additionally, the strengths, limitations and challenges in the use of the historical sources in studying sociolinguistic variation and change have been discussed. The conclusion is that the use of such sources plays an important role in discovering the diverse picture of sociolinguistic variation and change. Consequently, the limitations and challenges associated with this approach must not serve as obstacles to the growth and extension of the field of sociolinguistic variation and