What we can learn from using a visual questionnaire to investigate Dutch and Afrikaans impersonal strategies

Breed, Adri and Van Olmen, Daniel (2025) What we can learn from using a visual questionnaire to investigate Dutch and Afrikaans impersonal strategies. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 37 (1). pp. 35-63. ISSN 1470-5427

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Abstract

The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strategies. The present article aims to argue for a new way of investigating impersonal strategies that complements the other approaches, by reporting on the results of a visual questionnaire. More precisely, it discusses a visual questionnaire completed by speakers of Dutch and Afrikaans to determine whether this method is a satisfactory way of studying impersonal strategies and to also examine and compare the impersonal strategies of the two languages.