A symposium on ‘young gifted language users’ (‘Taalkunstenaars in de dop‘) was organized by Leonie Cornips together with Cubiss (libraries in Limburg and Brabant) and Fontys Hogeschool on 19 November 2015 with the aim to reflect on the upbringing of young children in dialect. The specific aim of the afternoon was to inform an audience of laypeople about the (dis) advantages of raising children in dialect in addition to Dutch. About 140 people visited the symposium from all kinds of institutions like youth healthcare, Kindergarten and primary school teachers, speech therapists, administrators of various municipalities as well as provincial administrators and also caretakers, and (grand)parents.
Cornips initiated the symposium since young mothers raised concerns about the fact that their children are not allowed to speak dialect in Kindergarten. The result of this institutional language policy is that young children do not longer want to use dialect in the home domain even while their parents address them in dialect. This language policy diverge from results of language acquisition and cognitive research that growing up in two languages from birth onwards bring about cognitive advantages.
Famous people from Limburg such as the DJ Felix Meurders, the mayor Petra Dassen, Jan Philipsen (ex-bassist Rowwen Heze and writer) presented their childhood experiences about speaking dialect and their job experiences in later life. Two lectures were presented from research at the UM. The first one by Leonie Cornips who showed on the basis of an investigation of 128 children between 5 and 8 years old that the size of Dutch vocabulary among children being dominant in a dialect is a bit larger than their Dutch monolingual peers. This research used an (inter)national task, therefore, the results of the children in Limburg could be controlled by previous studies among monolingual Dutch speaking children of the same age at the national level. The second study by Paul Jungbluth (educational sociologist Faculty of Economy, UM), showed that dialect-speaking children grow up in low educated families in some areas in Limburg. This has the effect that in the eyes of teachers, the use of dialect is connected to low education. However, when children are controlled for social class variables, dialect-speaking children do not reveal any significant differences regarding their monolingual Dutch classmates.
The second half of the afternoon was devoted to the concept of the World Café. The audience was asked to sit in pairs of seven around a table to exchange ideas about dialect speaking children and to write them down on tablecloths. Many visitors let us know that they have changed their general attitudes about dialect speaking children in more nuanced ones. The afternoon was a success; reflection was there! In the meantime all listeners have received an elaborate report on what is discussed that afternoon.
This symposium is part of the Arts, Media and Culture programme.
