The Department of Dutch Studies invites to a lecture by Prof. Dr Piet van Sterkenburg from Leiden, who is coming as part of short visits (Visiting Professors) of IDUB.
Is there a model Pole, Dutch or representative of any nation?
Everyone has an identity. We call it an individual identity. How can it be recognised? We will see that language and knowledge play an important role in the recognition process.
But is not there also such a thing as a social identity or group mentality? And if they do exist, what are their typical characteristics, or indeed: how do the Dutch, Germans and others differ from each other and from still others? Do we find this in the image that the tourist creates for himself or herself, or is it an image of our own that we create for ourselves as Poles or Spaniards?
Are we able to deduce from this what the identity of a nation actually is? And if we doubt it, should not we wonder if there really is a common collectivity? Or should we find another label for what makes us different from others?
That is a lot of questions and a lot of scientific uncertainty.
Prof. dr dr h.c. mult. Piet van Sterkenburg
He graduated with honours in Dutch Studies in Nijmegen. For more than thirty years he worked as director of the the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (INL, Institute for Dutch Lexicology) and was professor of lexicology at Leiden University. In addition, he was secretary general of the Permanent International Committee of Linguists for more than a quarter of a century. He was also guest professor at the Free University of Brussels. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Wrocław and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). His publications are on Middle Dutch lexicography, 17th century Dutch and modern Dutch with a special focus on monolingual dictionaries, but he has also published books and articles on the hidden side of Dutch, such as erotic vocabulary and swearing.
Translated by Natalia Noworól (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
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