Internationale Neerlandistiek - Volume 50, Issue 4, 2012

This study examined lexical and grammatical knowledge of adult learners of Dutch as a second language (L2) at the B1 and B2 speaking-proficiency levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In a sample of 208 Dutch L2 learners, 80 and 30 participants were found to be proficient in speaking at the B1 and B2 levels respectively, as assessed in eight computer-administered speaking tasks. Participants also performed paper-and-pencil tests of vocabulary and grammar knowledge. Average vocabulary sizes were obtained of 4000 and 7000 words (with standard deviations of 1623 and 1456) in the B1 and B2 groups, respectively. Overall performance on the grammar test, which assessed knowledge in ten grammatical domains, was significantly higher in the B2 group than in the B1 group, with average correct scores of 86% and 71%, respectively. For each of the ten domains of grammar, examples are given of features that B1 and B2 learners did, or did not yet, control.1

There is no doubt that the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) has had an influence on the academic study of Dutch literature over the last three decades. An interesting question, however, is: to what extent? Some scholars state that Bourdieu is the most important recent foreign influence on Dutch literary studies, while others consider him and his works (very much) overestimated. In this article, an attempt is made to quantify Bourdieu’s influence by presenting a statistical overview of his work in translation in general and, more particularly, by counting and analyzing the mentions of Bourdieu’s works in journals and other texts since his first appearance in Dutch in 1980. Indeed, Bourdieu turns out to have had, also numerically, a considerable number of citations. Nevertheless it remains difficult to draw final conclusions on this quantitative analysis alone. In further research the comparison with the number of citations of other prominent foreign thinkers in Dutch literary stud„ies should be taken into consideration, and a more substantial qualitative analy„sis should be performed, as well as the role played by ‘intellectual rumour’, as Bourdieu himself called it.

In this article we use the concept of ‘liminality’ to shed new light on Berlijnse notities, a collection of essays written by Dutch author Cees Nooteboom. Nooteboom wrote his essays in 1989 and 1990, during the fall of the Berlin Wall and consequent German reunification. Although he was an eye witness to these historic events, he distances himself from the political turmoil, and „posits himself as an outsider and a stranger. We argue that within the text, the voice of the pensive, reflexive outsider opens up a liminal space, in which the narrator is neither completely estranged from the German people and their history, nor completely part of all that is happening. However, this liminal space is not a stable given; we analyze the way in which the narrator’s reflexive position is threatened by the chaos of the unexpected but also heavily mediatised events of 1989, and look at the different ways in which the author tries to reconstitute this liminal space.