| dc.description.abstract | Dunglish is a portmanteau of Dutch and English and must therefore be influenced by both these languages. What Dunglish exactly is and how it is influenced by each language, however, is not clear. The only confirmed information on Dunglish is that this variety is often regarded in a negative light; the majority (70%) of Dutch people believe that Dunglish is basically ‘bad English’. Therefore, this thesis attempts to discover what Dunglish is exactly through a linguistic analysis of Dunglish phrases. To determine what Dunglish is, the following research question has been created: How is Dunglish represented in a text that seems to function to define the variety? A sub-question has also been formulated: what linguistic elements of Dunglish influence the representation of Dunglish? The questions will be answered through a linguistic analysis of Dunglish phrases found in Jacob & Haver’s language manual What and How Dunglish (2017). The analysis will consider how the five aspects of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) of Dunglish differ from English and Dutch. The results of the linguistic study show that all aspects influence Jacob & Haver’s representation of Dunglish heavily, except for those at the morphological level. Furthermore, it is revealed that the representation of Dunglish is characterized by L1 transfer and can therefore be seen as an interlanguage. For some phrases, it is are hard to believe people would say them, but the humorous intent of the book may explain why these are included nevertheless. Finally, through video analyses of spontaneous Dunglish speech, phonological, semantic and pragmatic features are found to be the most prominent features of Dunglish in real life. | |
