Author: penningink

Professor. Author.

Re-embracing my Dutch heritage

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There is much talk these days of immigration and assimilation. I’ve determined to assimilate my  roots.

A sudden desire to reclaim my Dutch identity happened while I was speaking Spanish last month on a Miami elevator. My wife and I were getting on a hotel elevator to go to the lobby. When the doors opened, a hotel employee was working on the elevator and spoke Spanish and made hand gestures to inquire if we were going up or down. 

Facade of the Flamingo Express and Post Office located in the Dutch Caribbean, featuring arched windows and a red-tiled roof.

“Abajo,” I said, tentatively recalling some of the two-years of Spanish I studied in college. But then another word came to my mind silently.

“Why?”

Why, I wondered, would a person who is not only in the United States but working here be unable or unwilling to speak English? Since they work on elevators, would it not be possible to at least learn up, down, open and close?

This probably sounds harsh to some. It sounds practical to me. And the question is born not out of judgment of immigrants but the fact that I come from an immigrant family.

Seventy years ago, in 1956, my mother and her parents and siblings came to the United States from the Netherlands. They had to have a sponsor and prove that they could gain employment. They also learned English. 

I remember my mom telling me she got work in an office and used the typing and filing as a way to improve and practice her English. My oldest uncle was able to purchase a television for the family and they used that to work on their vocabulary and intonation. My youngest uncle came home from school having been mocked for his accent and stood in front of a mirror repeating the words that caused him embarrassment until he could pronounce them as close as possible to an American Midwestern intonation. 

All of this to say my mother’s family assimilated. My mom was 16 at the time the family arrived in New Jersey and made their way to Michigan. Four years later she met my dad, an American whose dad had immigrated from the Netherlands as a boy. By the time I came around, all my family knew was English and I considered myself simply an American. My mom made some attempts to teach us Dutch, but we just giggled. This is typical of second-generation immigrants, like my friends with Hispanic surnames who speak less Spanish than I do.

When I was in high school, I wanted to learn Dutch. But the high school did not offer that. So I had two years of German. This is a bit ironic. My mothers family was still in Utrecht, a suburb of Amsterdam, when the Germans occupied it. Last year when one of my aunts died, my cousin told a story at the funeral of her spitting on a Nazi soldier’s boots when he tried to give her candy.

I also recently finished reading a great book called “Things We Couldn’t Say” by Diet Eman. Eman went to the same church my wife and I attended in Grand Rapids when we were first married. She had worked in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation. She speaks proudly in the book of refusing to speak German, even though she could, that whole time. She lost her fiancé in the conception camps, and left the Netherlands after the war due to the painful memories, eventually landing in the United States. She passed a few years ago, but would likely have frowned, or this many years on, laughed at me for learning German.

But I give a lot of this as backdrop. What really sparked my desire to re-embrace was a recent trip to the southern Caribbean. We took a Christmas cruise to the “ABC” islands—Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. I learned that all of these islands maintain a close connection to the Netherlands and are part of the Netherlands Antilles. I thought this was merely a historical artifact. I saw a man with a t-shirt that said “Dutch Caribbean” and I thought it was amusing. Then I saw that descriptor on a post office and city hall and other official contexts. 

I also heard conversations in shops and on the sidewalks that reminded me of family gatherings when I was young, back when my grandparents and mom and aunts and uncles would speak Dutch when together. It turns out that Dutch is one of the main languages of these islands. Another is Papamiento, a blend of Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and African languages. 

I thought many times on this trip that it would have been nice had I learned Dutch as a child, and then I speak it with the folks on these islands. In addition to learning German and Spanish formally, I on my own studied some French to prepare for teaching at a partner school there four times. When I worked for an NGO I always tried to pick up some basic phrases in everything from Hausa, a common trade language in Nigeria, to Tagalog, one of numerous dialects in the Philippines. I’ve always been fascinated by languages. But why did I not learn the language of my heritage?

Well, I’m doing that now. Despite the large number of Dutch people where I live in west Michigan, few speak Dutch anymore. But I may go to the Netherlands one day,, and I’d like to return to the Dutch Caribbean, where I could speak Dutch. But even so, I want to learn it as a hobby, because language acquisition is a good exercise for the brain health of persons my age. But I also want to do it as a re-connection to my own heritage, albeit decades late.

I have started the lessons, and am enjoying it. I also recently visited a Dutch store near me to acquire some Dutch treats. (Little known fact: we get the English word “cookie” from the Dutch “koekje,” which technically means little cakes and comes from what the Dutch put together from meager provisions when they lived as a colony in New Amsterdam, so named from 1624 until 1664 when the pompous English renamed it New York). 

My mom is amused that I am doing this. She is advanced in years, and laughed when I practiced a few of the basic phrases I learned so far. I recently moved her and my dad to assisted living when they both suffered sudden health declines. As part of that, my mom had fallen and passed out and was a bit loopy for several days, during which one time she randomly spoke Dutch. She was no doubt back in her long-term memory because she had not done so in years. This also got me thinking. I am all for assimilation of immigrants into the language and culture of their new country. But it saddens me that my mom suppressed a lot of her Dutchness, including the language, to blend in. She says she identifies simply and proudly as an American, I’m happy about that. But part of her, and my, identity is Dutch as well.

Perhaps I should fill out the demographic information on various forms that I am Dutch-American and join the hyphenated community of my countrymen. 

For now, I try to regularly take time in my home office, glancing occasionally at a decoupage of the city of Utrecht I took from my parents place when they moved, to go through my Dutch lessons. I feel like an immigrant in a way. A man of a certain age with a PhD going through the paces of what seems like “See Dick Run” books from grammar school. But it is a source of joy and a sense of duty to learn the language of my roots.

I will still speak English to most, and Spanish or German or French when necessary in multi-cultural conversations. But when those interactions end, don’t be surprised if I say good bye in Dutch:

Tot ziens.

Grammar matters as an opportunity for all

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A year or so ago, I received an email from a faculty colleague on a university committee which was giving approval for one of my classes to receive special status as a writing class that would satisfy a particular university requirement. The class was given that status, but she had a question for me.

What did I think, she mused collegially, of the notion that teaching grammar and holding students to a grammatical standard was inappropriate these days. She shared the thoughts of several authors who say teaching and grading based on grammatical standards is unfair to minority students and a form of “white supremacy.” 

In a nutshell, I responded, I disagree. White supremacy is a serious charge, but it is applied too frequently and superficially to generate more than an eye roll as a response. I am sensitive to the fact that my students come from different backgrounds and have different learning styles. But I am also sensitive that when they enter a competitive job market, particularly in one demanding writing proficiency, grammar will matter universally. 

My arguments in favor of teaching grammar and holding students accountable to it are numerous and logical. For one, it is a negative stereotype that certain persons can’t master English grammar because of their race or culture. There is much evidence to the contrary. In fact, many of my minority students have shown greater grammatical clarity than some of my life-long English-speaking white students. It comes down to individual will and ability and not a foregone conclusion based on arbitrary group identity. My own family on my mother’s side came to the United States from another country and had to learn English and learn it well to adapt to a new country.

Also, insisting that students know and can apply the rules of grammar does not negate or disrespect multiple forms of individual and sub-cultural expression. I was told by one of my professors that I need to know those rules before I break them, and then give a reason why such as why it is more creative, expressive, or persuasive. Evidence of this can be seen in the sequence of English classes I had in high school, in which we were drilled on the rules of grammar including such monsters as future pluperfect tense and gerunds. In subsequent classes we were taught the works of “great” authors who were celebrated for breaking the rules we just learned. EE Cummings eschewed capitalization often, including referencing himself. The unusual dialogue stylings of Cormac McCarthy earned him awards. Grammatical variance is seen in professional work as well, such as the Apple ad campaign “Think Different”. Some criticized the campaign for an adverbial slip in not saying “Think Differently”. But that was the creative point. Of course, one would need to know grammar to see the play on words and double meaning of the campaign.

It is also important to look at grammar broadly to understand its universal importance. All languages have grammar—none of them are a form of supremacy. I have formerly studied German and Spanish. On my own I picked up a little French when I taught at a partner university in France four times and wanted to give greetings, find the bathroom, and order food. I am now Rosetta Stone to learn Dutch, the native language of my immigrant mother. In my travels in an earlier career I have traveled to a variety of countries and met people from around the world. If I attempted to learn and use a few words and phrases in Tagalog in the Philippines or Tiv with a Nigerian, I appreciated some gentle correction and instruction by native speakers who took the time with me. I have not only not been offended by reviewing the grammatical nuances of each language, I have found them to help me learn and make sense of each language.

Grammar should be seen as a structural foundation of a language that is common to all. All houses have foundations and the basics of windows and doors and roofs but still can vary in overall architectural style. Language is the same. In 25 years of teaching I have had students of a variety of races and some for whom English is a second language. These students, at the undergraduate and graduate level, have impressed me with their clear and insightful academic and professional expression, and this was made possible by grammar. The foundation of their writing was the same in grammatical basics, but they showed individuality in what and how they wrote and addressed a topic. Good musicians practice scales before playing music. Good athletes drill on fundamentals before competition. Good writers master grammar before demonstrating their particular style.

Grammar is not a form of oppression, it is an opportunity for equality. I would be ashamed not to teach it well to all my capable students. 

Penning Ink to reboot and rebrand

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I have not done much blogging recently. The last blog post I wrote on Penning Ink was way last May. There are reasons for that.

One, I was busy writing other things. As an academic I have always maintained a healthy research and publication agenda. These have been mostly academic journal articles and conference presentations. I could easily keep up regular blogging while doing that.

But in the past year and a half I had opportunities to take on larger publication projects. In addition to three journal articles that involved teams, which can be time consuming, I wrote a book and two book chapters. The book was something I proposed and wrote during a fall sabbatical in 2024. It was published last spring. My most recent blog post was about the publication of that book.

Meanwhile, my journal articles caught the attention of peer scholars working on books, and two of them reached out to me to invite me to write a chapter in books they were editing. So last year I submitted those, one having to do with measuring organizational reputation and another about public relations history. Both of these were submitted late last year and should be published in 2026.

Another life situation also slowed down my writing. Both of my elderly parents simultaneously started having significant health issues. There were trips to the hospital for various problems. The long story short is that my family had to make a sudden decision to move them from their independent senior living situation into a facility where they get the care they will now need. Anyone who has had to help their parents in this fashion knows the time demand for everything from physically moving to handling medical and legal paperwork. 

So now that my academic writing projects are complete and my parents are safely moved, I looked at the dawn of a new year and decided to reboot and rebrand for 2026. As a result, another blog I wrote for years called PierPoints blog will no longer have new posts. Instead, I am merging it with this PenningInk blog. PierPoints has always been the place where I posted my newspaper column  and other posts that were a variety of social commentaries. Penning Ink was where I wrote about public relations and communications. 

Penning Ink has long been the name of my freelance business, which has been about freelance journalism, to public relations consulting, and now is the imprint for my independent book publishing and my blog. You can find my professional and non-fiction books there, and soon I hope to add Christian fiction.

Going forward, the Penning Ink blog will have a broader focus on writing, communications, general commentary and Christian themes. 

If you have been a subscriber to Penning Ink, thank you. I hope you’ll continue to read what I have to offer, and I promise to offer more in the new year. 

Book Connects Theory to Strategic Practice for Public Relations Professionals and Students

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The result of more than a year of work, my new book “Public Relations Theory in Practice: Strategic Applications for Professionals” will be published June 2, 2025. It is available now for pre-order at Amazon (in both paperback or Kindle versions) or the Business Expert Press publisher’s website.

I had worked as a public relations professional before transitioning into a career as a full-time professor. I learned quickly that theory and practice are not disconnected as some assume, but are realistically connected. In my 25 years as an academic I worked to connect academic concepts with everyday practice both in class and when speaking to professionals.

I grew weary over time of the expression “that sounds good in theory, but here in the REAL world….” The fact is, professionals’ experiences are the subject of research, which in turn develops theory. If practice informs theory, it only makes sense that theory would inform practice.

The key benefit to a robust understanding of theory can be summed up in one word: strategy. Public relations professionals speak often of the need to be strategic, a common part of a PR campaign plan is the articulation of strategy. Well, theory is fuel for strategy.

As I note in the book’s introduction, today’s public relations professionals need to account to management and clients for whether they have caused stakeholders to make meaningful changes in their attitudes and behaviors that match organizational objectives. This requires strategy based on established theory that is well-reasoned and tested, not just informed guesses and clever tactics based on individual perspective.

The book is divided into six parts, beginning with a simple explanation of what theories really are, how they are derived, different types of theories, and why they are practical and not mere abstractions. The following parts explain communication theory generally (interpersonal, small group, and organizational), mass media, persuasion, ethics, and theories specific to public relations practice. Each part ends with a series of summative strategic statements that professionals can apply to daily practice.

In keeping with the theme of connecting academics to professional practice, I am grateful to have received testimonials from a respected academic and professional:

“In Public Relations Theory in Practice, Penning does an excellent job providing an overview of the major theories applicable to public relations in easy-to-understand language I am impressed with the breadth of theories that are addressed. The book would be a valuable resource for an undergraduate theory course or as a resource for graduate students when they are seeking theories for a specific study. It would also be a good resource for practitioners preparing for the accreditation exam (APR).”

Marlene S. Neill, PhD,APR, Fellow PRSA 

Professor & Graduate Program Director

Senior Research Fellow, Arthur W. Page Center

Baylor University Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media

Public Relations Theory in Practice bridges the gap between academic theory and real-world application, equipping professionals with the knowledge to move beyond instinct and guesswork. Penning delves into communication, media, and persuasion and ethical theories, demonstrating how they can be strategically applied to every aspect of public relations. From understanding audiences to evaluating results, you’ll learn to craft campaigns with a theoretical foundation, ensuring effectiveness and achieving organizational goals. This book is a valuable source of insight and guidance for communicators at all levels.”

Eliot Mizrachi, VP, Strategy and Content, Arthur W. Page Society

Whether you are a public relations professional, student or professor, I hope you’ll find the book interesting and useful.

Has the AP Lost its Role as Standard for Writing?

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It used to be called the “bible” of journalism, and as such was widely respected by those in public relations who wrote news releases and other items sent to reporters.

But the Associated Press Style Guide has gone from an annual spiral bound book to an online subscription site with email updates to something potentially irrelevant. The Associated Press (AP) has gone from covering news and guiding how news should be covered to making news of its own. It has gone from promoting an objective style to pushing subjective and partisan framing.

This came to a head when the Trump administration banned the AP from the White House briefing room after the organization refused to acknowledge a name change from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. However, a variety of sources have reported that there is more to it than that, including the Wall Street Journal, Daily Signal, and Axios. Other reporting revealed that the AP receives funding from the far-left Omidyar Network. It has also been noticed that the AP never covered the fact that more than 400 reporters had their press pass revoked by the Biden administration. 

Apart from the Gulf of America naming issue, criticism of the AP’s drift into leftist partisanship has been growing over time. Examples include their guidance to capitalized Black but not white when referring to a subject’s race. Or their “Transgender Topical Coverage Guide” that warns not to include comments from experts that are contrary to the approved narrative—an example that shows a taking of sides and censorship of voices that is far removed from non-partisan objectivity on which the AP built its reputation.

I have heard that many PR firms and corporate communication offices are eschewing the AP in favor of their own house style. I also see in many actual newspapers a style that is different than that of the AP (this could be negligence more than protest, but the case remains). Of course the emergence of blogs and independent journalism means much writing has gone from 3rd person to first person voice and other deviations from standard AP style. I have decided to not let my AP subscription auto-renew, and will explain all this to future classes and let the adoption of the AP guide be optional.

Meanwhile, since the AP thinks it does not have to respond to formal name changes, I have seen some change the name of the AP from Associated Press to other options. These include American Pravda, Aggregated Propaganda, or Associated Partisanship. Its notable that some of the alternatives seem more accurate and objective.