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The Appendici to the Leiden University Resolutions of Curators and Mayors form a rich collection of documents from different genres, including letters, statutes and testimonies. Spanning the period between the founding of Leiden University in 1575 until its temporary dissolution in 1811, these documents are well-suited for historical linguistic research of Dutch in general, and for those interested in the relationships between norm and language in particular, as the period covers a key period in the codification of Dutch (ca. 1550–1804). In this data paper, the author introduces and describes the Leiden University Resolutions Appendici Corpus (lurac), a single-domain (i.e., context of interaction), multi-genre diachronic corpus of 103,451 words, consisting of samples of the Appendici to the Leiden University Resolutions for ten time periods of 25 years between 1575 and 1811. Both raw data and metadata are available.

Contains fulltext : 244551.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) 05 januari 2022 23 p.

In 2005, Arnold Zwicky posited two misapprehensions about language: the Recency Illusion, or the false idea that certain language variation is new, and the Frequency Illusion, the erroneous belief that a particular word or phrase occurs often. Since their conception, these concepts have received widespread attention in popular scientific linguistics, but quantitative research investigating their application is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical investigation of Zwicky’s proposed illusions. It does so by collecting statements about recency (‘this word is new’) and frequency (‘this construction occurs often’) from a database of Dutch prescriptive publications (1900–2018). I assessed their accuracy by comparing them to linguistic sources, including dictionaries, and usage corpora and other data. Our research showed that recency statements were rare, but that frequency statements, especially using high frequency terms such as vaak (‘often’), were commonplace. Compared to usage, most prescriptive recency and frequency statements for both lexis and grammar indeed constituted Zwickian illusions. This seems partly due to genuine erroneous or unsupported beliefs by authors, but also partly to prescriptive genre conventions and rhetorical choices. Our explorative research highlights the complex usage–prescriptivism interface, and argues for more research into this aspect of language perceptions.

Pastoral care in parishes is a rather “silent” religious practice. As a result, data regarding the quantity and quality of regular pastoral care in local churches is scarce. To address this defciency, we added several questions about pastoral care and support to the Church Life Survey and then carried out the survey with church attenders (N = 2,854) from 30 Dutch Protestant parishes. The results show that church attenders mostly receive pastoral care from their minister or professional pastoral worker. Church attenders also frequently advise others in their community to ask for pastoral support. They feel that their congregations should not only pay attention to particularly joyful or painful circumstances but should also direct more pastoral attention towards a general interest in people’s lives. By and large, respondents acknowledged that pastoral support is done in a competent and safe atmosphere. This study reveals a wide range of quantitative and qualitative insights into the frequency and quality of pastoral care as a religious practice, a practice that is not often discussed but which is of great importance to church attenders and is now a practice that is being given a voice through data.

In this article I argue that researchers studying migrant congregations should pay attention to the denominational arrangement in which these congregations find themselves. I compare two contrasting case studies: the case of African (Pentecostal) churches in Amsterdam Southeast and the case of the Spanish-language parish in the centre of Amsterdam. The case studies show that denominational structures can provide resources in the form of buildings, persons and trust. Migrant congregations which don’t have these resources available via denominations, have to find other ways to acquire them.

This article offers the case study of a contemporary mediatized Christian passion event that takes place annually in the public sphere in the Netherlands. Contributing to debates in various studies...

Contains fulltext : 140639.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) More than fifty years after the first edition of Thompson's seminal Motif-Indexof Folk Literature, we present an online search engine tailored to fully disclose the index digitally. This search engine, called MOMFER, greatly enhances the searchability of the Motif-Index and provides exciting new ways to explore the collection. This is enabled by our use of modern techniques from both natural language processing and information retrieval. The key feature of the search tool is the way in which it allows users to search the Motif-Index for semantic concepts, such as ‘mythical animals’, ‘mortality’, or ‘emotions’. This paper will explain the motivations for creating the search tool, explicate the production process, and show in a number of case studies how the search tool can be used to explore the index in innovative ways. 20 april 2015 16 p.

In a case study on suburban churches the author describes how religious ideas, material resources and relationships of trust together form capital that enables and limits the civic engagement of the churches. The case study is based on ethnographic research in the newly built suburb of Leidsche Rijn in the Netherlands. The author concludes that a focus on the combination of different forms of capital available in congregational networks helps to obtain a better understanding of the often noted positive relationship between religion and civic engagement. The study shows that capital has an ambiguous influence: it enables and limits civic engagement. Researchers should therefore not be overly positive about the effects of social capital. They should also be aware of the ‘essential contestedness’ of civic engagement. The way civic engagement actually works on an empirical level calls into question any easy definition that researchers may devise.

Two cases in which researchers take part in religious ritual show how being a participant enhances the researcher’s understanding of what is happening. Through these cases the authors attempt to shed light on the methodological problems concerning the “intersubjectivity” of research on ritual. Ritual goes beyond the verbal and pulls bodily sensations, emotion and gestures into the domain of intersubjectivity established through fieldwork. Experiencing the emotional and physical sensations that accompany ritual give the researcher a clue as to what other participants experience. But maybe more importantly, the participation of the researcher also triggers reflections on the meaning and efficacy of the ritual. These verbalized interpretations of what has happened may further strengthen the researcher’s understanding. The authors argue that it is exactly through putting this intersubjectivity at the centre of both the actual fieldwork and the subsequent analysis that the ever flexible and contested nature of ritual and the dynamic tension between semantic and tacit meaning can be most fruitfully explored.

This article describes the developments of the EO Youth Day, a Dutch Christian mass event that attracts thousands of young people every year. It is argued that in the course of time, the EO Youth Day has changed from a modest and sober event characterized by a Calvinist outlook to an expressive 'hip' event with an evangelical swing. This change becomes especially visible when the first versions of the EO Youth Day in the 1970s are compared with more recent ones-a comparison we shall make in this article. Central to this change is the way the body is addressed and referred to in what we call the 'forms of embodiment' offered at the EO Youth Day. Evidence for this is provided by an explorative empirical study of four EO Youth Days-those organized in 1977, 1987, 1999, and 2008. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.

This article focuses on the interaction of African churches with the local social, political and religious ecology of Amsterdam Southeast in their search for worship space. It shows the continuing importance of the local, even for such transnational religious movements as African churches. Constructing a worship location confronts the churches with the 'ingrained orders of social power in the host society' (Favell 2003). They encountered familiar black – white distinctions, a legion of 'white helpers' and a long process of building trust. I argue that African churches use transnational and local strategies. Becoming part of the local is inspired by missionary motives and is related to the character of religious congregations as relatively fixed organisations which nurture a practice of engagement with local society. Cet article se concentre sur l'interaction des églises africaines avec l'écologie locale au niveau sociale, politique et religieuse du Sud-est d'Amsterdam dans leur recherche de l'espace de culte. Cela démontre l'importance ininterrompue du local, même pour des mouvements religieux transnationaux comme les églises africaines. La construction d'un espace de culte confronte les églises avec « les ordres enracinés du pouvoir social dans la société hôte » (Favell 2003). Ils rencontrent la distinction habituelle entre noir et blanc, une légion d'« aide blanche » et un long processus de construire la confiance. Je soutiens que des églises africaines utilisent des stratégies transnationales et locales. Devenir une partie des locaux est inspiré par des motifs de missionnaire et est rapproché du caractère des congrégations religieuses comme les organisations relativement fixes qui élèvent une pratique d'engagement avec la société locale.