Abstract
This article presents a comparative corpus analysis of the language variation in Flemish TV fiction series broadcast around 1980 and in the late 2000s, in order to assess the oftenheard claim that the use of Standard Dutch in TV fiction has decreased in favor of so-called tussentaal, an ‘intermediate’ variety. Using mixed-effects logistic regression, we assessed the effect of period on the use of 7 tussentaal markers in 21 old and recent series. Because these markers do not uniquely identify tussentaal but can also indicate dialect use, we included estimates of the speakers’ dialect use as a covariate. Rather than evidencing a straightforward decrease of the use of Standard Dutch in favour of tussentaal, our results indicate that the linguistic spectrum in TV fiction has been reduced over a period of 30 years time. Whereas language use around 1980 ranged from Standard Dutch to dialect, in present-day series a ‘cleaned up’ variety of tussentaal, differing maximally from both Standard Dutch and dialect, prevails.
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