Cover not available

In:The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the margins
Edited by Leonie Cornips and Vincent A. de Rooij
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 45] 2018
► pp. 55–88

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 4
Cité Duits

A polyethnic miners’ variety

 | Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
 | Maastricht University | Maastricht University
Published online: 7 March 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.45.04aue
Abstract
In the late 1930s and 1940s, locally born children of immigrant coal miners in Tuinwijk, a neighborhood in the village of Eisden in Belgian Limburg, developed a way of speaking among themselves which they later labelled Cité Duits. Having become coal miners themselves, they continued to use Cité Duits as an in-group language throughout their lives when working underground as well as in their private lives. We will show that Cité Duits is a hybrid variety resulting from combining elements of German, Belgian Dutch and the Maasland dialect spoken in Belgian Limburg through focusing and sedimentation. We argue that Cité Duits developed and continues to be employed as a symbolic language for expressing group identity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical context: A circulation of labor
  • 3.The immigrants in the Campine mines, including Eisden
  • 4.Social and ethnic conditions for the emergence of Cité Duits in Eisden/Tuinwijk
  • 5.The local population’s attitudes towards the immigrants
  • 6.Sociolinguistic conditions for the emergence of Cité Duits in Eisden
  • 7.Some linguistic characteristics of Cité Duits
    • 7.1Phonological characteristics
    • 7.2(Morpho-)syntactic characteristics
      • 7.2.1The definite article
      • 7.2.2The indefinite article
      • 7.2.3The possessive pronoun and the attributive adjective
    • 7.3Word order in the two-verb cluster
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (30)
References
Antonsich, M. 2010. Searching for belonging – An analytical framework. Geography Compass 4(6): 644–659. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barbiers, S., van der Auwera, J., Bennis, H., Boef, E., De Vogelaer, G. & van der Ham, M. 2008. Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND), Vol. II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beyers, L. 2008. From class to culture: Immigration, recession, and daily ethnic boundaries in Belgium, 1940s–1990s. International Review of Social History 53: 37–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornips, L. 2008. Loosing grammatical gender in Dutch. The result of bilingual acquisition and/or an act of identity? Special issue ‘Ethnolects? The Emergence of New Varieties among Adolescents’. International Journal of Bilingualism 12(1–2): 105–124.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2009. Empirical syntax: Idiolectal variability in two- and three-verb clusters in regional standard Dutch and Dutch dialects. In Describing and Modeling Variation in Grammar, A. Dufter, J. Fleischer & G. Seiler (eds), 203–224. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornips, L. & Hulk, A. 2006. External and internal factors in bilingual and bidialectal language development: Grammatical gender of the Dutch definite determiner. In L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis. Dialogues [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 42], C. Lefebvre, L. White & C. Jourdan (eds), 355–378. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornips, L. & Nortier, J. (eds). 2008. Ethnolects? The Emergence of New Varieties among Adolescents. International Journal of Bilingualism 12(1–2).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Defoin, G. 1962. Vocabulaire professionel du houilleur belge. Liège: Université de Liège.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delbroek, B. 2008. Op zoek naar koolputters. Buitenlandse mijnwerkers in Belgisch-Limburg in de twintigste eeuw. Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 5(3): 80–103. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delbroek B. 2011. ‘In de put’. De Dagelijkse Werking van de Arbeidsmarkt voor Mijnwerkers in Belgisch-Limburg (1900–1966). PhD dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delbroek, B. 2016. In de put. De Arbeidsmarkt voor Mijnwerkers in Belgisch-Limburg, 1900–1966 [Maaslandse Monografieën, Vol. 79]. Sociaal Historisch Centrum. Hilversum: Verloren.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dorian, N. (ed.). 1989. Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dorren, G. 2013. Met de Minsten der Mijnen. Geschiedenis van de Kleine Zusters van de H. Joseph. Hilversum: Verloren.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goossens, J. 1965. Die Gliederung des Südfränkischen. RhVjBl 30: 79–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Himmelreich, H. 1943. Volkstümliche Beobachtungen an der Umgangssprache in Gelsenkirchen. PhD dissertation, University of Münster.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klessman, C. 1986. Comparative immigrant history: Polish workers in the Ruhr area and the North of France. Journal of Social History 20(2): 335–353. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knotter, A. 2012. Labour migrants and cross-border commuters. Comparative perspectives on mining labour markets in the Belgian-Dutch-German borderland in the twentieth century. In Montanregion als Sozialregion. Zu gesellschaftlichen Dimension von ‘Region’ in der Montanwirtschaft, A. Westermann (ed.), 125–150. Husum: Mathiesen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kohlbacher, J. 2012. Cité-Duits. Talk presented at Winterslag, Belgium, 2 June.
McCook, B. 2006 Migration, citizenship, and Polish integration in the Ruhr valley and northeastern Pennsylvania, 1870–1924. German Historical Institute (Washington), Bulletin 38: 119–353.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minten, L. 2006. Beeldvorming. In De Koolputters. Geschiedenis van de Limburgse Mijnwerkers, F. Delarbre, B. Delbroek et al. (eds), 395–416. Zwolle: Waanders.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muysken, P. 2000. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nortier, J. & Svendsen, B. A. (eds). 2015. Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century: Linguistic Practices Across Urban Spaces. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pecht, N. 2013. “Siehs’ du, du wars (…) besser wie du hast gedacht: Du has’ Französisch gesprochen!” Taal en Tongval 65(2): 149–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pecht, N. 2015. The postfield in Cité Duits: Syntactic variation in in-group speech. In Artikelen van de 8ste Anéla Conferentie Toegepaste Taalwetenschap 2015, M. Boogaard, B. van den Bogaerde, S. Bacchini, M. Curcic, N. de Jong, E. le Pichon & L. Rasier 39–58. Delft: Eburon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rampton, B. 1995. Crossing. Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salewski, K. 1998. Zur Homogenität des Substandards älterer Bergleute im Ruhrgebiet. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stuyck, K., Luyten, S., Kesteloot, C., Meert, H. & Peleman, K. 2008. A geography of gender relations: Role patterns in the context of different regional industrial development. Regional Studies 42(1): 69–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I. & Hulk, A. 2013. Grammatical gender and the notion of default: Insights from language acquisition. Lingua 137: 128–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van de Wijngaard, T. & Crompvoets, H. 1989. Mijnwerkersterminologie in de beide Limburgen: Meer verscheidenheid dan eenheid. Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde 51. <[URL]>
Yuval-Davis, N. 2006. Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice 40(3): 197–214. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Jaspers, Jürgen
2018. The boundaries of belonging. In The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging [IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society, 45], ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue