Introduction

The original preoccupation with the description of the linguistic performance of immigrant bilinguals in their two languages in an attempt to discover universal linguistic features of language contact has often meant that questions regarding a bilingual's perception and awareness of contact phenomena have not received a lot of attention. Usually studies of language contact in the Australian context have done little more than mention the fact that bilingual informants, when questioned about their speech patterns, realised that some mixing of languages occurred (see e.g. Clyne 1967; Pauwels 1980; Bettoni 1981). The same studies often also recorded that this awareness of mixing one's languages triggered off a whole array of feelings in the bilinguals ranging from indifference or resignation to annoyance or even acute embarrassment. Recently, with the upsurge of studies of language attitudes, researchers have become interested in establishing to what extent bilinguals' perceptions of ‘language mixing’ have an impact on the process of language maintenance or language shift (see e.g. Chana and Romaine's 1984 study of the attitudes to mixing of Panjabi English bilinguals in Britain). That is, does the perceived linguistic quality — pure or mixed — of the ethnic language affect its status, usefulness and so on with respect to English? I will explore this issue in relation to Dutch in Australia.