This project maps the mental representation of pluricentricity in the Dutch language area by empirically studying perceptions of and attitudes towards national grammatical and lexical variation. It will address the issue of conceptual and methodological vagueness in much research on pluricentricity by adopting a systematic transnational approach (collecting data in the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten) and by methodically comparing (i) different dimensions of acceptance, (ii) different types of language users and (iii) different types of national variation. The project will as such afford unique insights into the language internal and external factors influencing the acceptance of natiolectal variation and into the relevance of the nation as a level of analysis in the current Late Modern age. It will hence allow feeding present-day debates on the usefulness of the pluricentricity concept with empirically sound arguments. Methodologically, the mixed-methods approach developed to study acceptance comprehensibly – complementing online experiments with face-to-face qualitative interviews – will be transferrable to other language contexts. This will in the long run allow more reliable comparison of international research data and hence also more reliable, empirically grounded typologies of pluricentric languages.