Standard language ideology and Dutch school inspection reports (1801–1854)

Abstract

AbstractThe decades around 1800 saw the rise of standard language ideology in the Northern Netherlands, and its almost immediate implementation in concrete policy measures. For the first time, the national government initiated official spelling and grammar regulations (1804, 1805). Policy measures were also taken to reorganize and nationalize the field of education. The language and education policies were part of a wider range of measures aimed at the formation of a Dutch nation-state. One of the control mechanisms introduced in this period was a national school inspection system. In this paper, we discuss school inspection reports of the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the way language planning and multilingualism interacted. In particular, we want to find out whether school inspectors and teachers actively promoted the officially codified variety, and to what extent this implied discouragement of the use of other varieties of Dutch.