Delven in Digibron: Een historisch en computationeel onderzoek naar religieus taalgebruik en groepsdynamiek onder reformatorische Nederlanders

In April 2011, ‘Digibron’ was launched on the internet. This digital archive contains a wide range of publications, the majority of which were written for and by Dutch orthodox Protestants. Examples include the newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad, various church magazines, and a large number of religious autobiographies. The digitization and digital accessibility of large quantities of written sources have made it possible to analyze them using digital research techniques. This offers possibilities beyond traditional historical research, such as the relatively straightforward identification of trends over longer historical periods. Delving into Digibron maps the development of religious language among Dutch orthodox Protestants by using various text collections (primarily from Digibron) and a range of computational techniques. The study covers a period of four centuries: from the language used by so-called fijnen in the eighteenth century to the language of the bevindelijk gereformeerden in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The computational methods employed include keyword analysis, n-gram and collocation analysis, the calculation of relative word and word-list frequencies, topic modeling, and the computation of association scores. In his dissertation De weg in woorden (The Way in Words), Cornelis van de Ketterij collected a large number of words and expressions related to conversion that were used by bevindelijk gereformeerden between 1900 and 1970. He referred to these words and expressions as ‘pietistic vocabulary’ or ‘language of Canaan’. The term bevindelijk gereformeerden refers to orthodox Protestants who can be situated within various denominations, including the Oud Gereformeerde Gemeenten, the Gereformeerde Gemeenten, the Gereformeerde Gemeenten in Nederland and the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken. Van de Ketterij argued that pietistic vocabulary does not change or develop. He also found few differences in language use among the various sources he examined. The assumption that the language of Canaan is static and homogeneous is abandoned in this dissertation. Within sociolinguistics, language is understood as dynamic and varied. Religious language should be approached the same way, and in this dissertation the language of Dutch orthodox Protestants is examined accordingly. When the various findings of the research are brought together, several conclusions can be drawn. First, the research has shown that the ‘language of Canaan’ cannot be defined as a static set of words and expressions. It can, however, be understood as a commonly used crystallization term for the phenomenon whereby Dutch orthodox Protestants employ a distinctive linguistic variety that differs from the common language in several respects. The language of Canaan plays an important role in group identity. It is best characterized as a sociolect, a linguistic variety used by a specific social group. This study underlines the added value of applying computational research techniques in (religious) historical research. These techniques make it possible to analyze large quantities of sources spanning long periods of time. They also allow for the identification of differences that would be difficult to detect using traditional research methods, for example because they are implicitly embedded in the text or because they are very subtle. A disadvantage of computational research methods is that they often focus on words with above-average frequencies. This makes it advisable to combine computational techniques with close reading, as well as to combine different computational approaches with one another. Digibron is ideally suited for computational research. However, the possibilities for conducting analyses within Digibron’s digital environment are limited. It is therefore crucial that the digital files be made available to researchers.