This article points at the problematic relationship between sociolinguisticsand sociology, which has a.o. led to a conception of language asmerely a reflector or a marker of identity, and to a neglect of the role oflanguage in social and ethnic life. Instead, identity is here portrayed asan interplay between self- and other-positioning, and this promises toreveal much more about the quirky and fleeting linguistic uses someMoroccan youths make of Antwerp dialect, Standard Dutch and imperfectDutch. These uses are subsequently analysed as linguistic stylisations(cf. Rampton), ie. strategic exaggerations or inauthenticities whichpotentially or temporarily question the social relations they evoke.
