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The attitudes of Flemish high school students in Brussels towards different types of Brussels Flemings were registered in five different experimental conditions. The latter were created by varying systematically the following characteristics of the investigator: whether he belonged to the Flemish ingroup or to the Francophone outgroup, whether he was an insider or an outsider in Brussels, and whether he converged linguistically towards his audience or diverged from it. The purpose of this experiment was to examine the ethnic identity of the Ss and to evaluate Tajfel's and Giles's concept of it. It is argued that what their theory calls a positive sense of identity, in the present case, would be much better termed a defence mechanism serving to hide uneasiness and frustration and thereby protecting an uncertain and vulnerable self. Three points are made to show that the Ss' strong positive identification with the ‘consistent’ Brussels Flemings and their equally strong differentiation from the ‘gallicised’ ones cannot be considered as indicators of a positive sense of identity.

The Flemish nation is a reality. Flanders has even become a state to some extent. Flanders no longer speaks French. French has been gradually ideologised from the language of prestige to the language of the enemy. Flanders has not chosen Flemish, but Dutch as its new language of prestige. There was no elite in Flanders speaking Flemish. Those who should have developed Standard Flemish in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, switched to French. After 1830, the Orangists put forward three major arguments to reject Flemish and to opt for Dutch. First, Flemish was not strong enough to compete with French. Second, Flemish was not good enough; it was corrupted by French, it was only a poor by-product of a Belgian nation-state that was dominated by French. Third, by opting for Dutch, the Flemings would link up with their history. In the second half of the 19 th century, a process of dutchification gradually set in. As the importance of language as a social, economic and, therefore, political factor increased, the influence of Dutch grew stronger. Yet, there seem to be limits to the dutchification of Flemish society and, consequently, of the language of the Flemings. Even the most dedicated supporters of Pan-Netherlandic unity somehow reject the language of the Dutch as a model for Flanders.

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