Social differentiation of standardization and writing traditions in Bruges between 1750-1830.

Since 1995 I am involved in historical sociolinguistic research on the language situation in Flanders during the 19th century. This research aims at an overview of the social stratification of language variation at the time, on the basis of original corpus analyses.
In a case study of the situation in Bruges, we are now focussing on the linguistic behaviour of the upper social classes (lower and middle classes were analyzed in my PhD) on the levels of spelling, grammar and style. Further attention is given to the specific functions of the various language varieties at work.