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Diglossia

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This article is about languages. For writing systems, seeDigraphia.
Not to be confused withDiglossa (bird).
The station board ofHapur Junction railway stationinNorthern India.Digraphiais present between the two formal registers of a common vernacular,Hindustani,[1][2]which is an example oftriglossia.[3]
Sociolinguistics
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Inlinguistics,diglossia(/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/dy-GLOSS-ee-ə,USalso/daɪˈɡlɔːsiə/dy-GLAW-see-ə) is a situation in which twodialectsorlanguagesare used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a singlelanguage community.In addition to the community's everyday orvernacularlanguage variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highlycodifiedlect(labeled "H" or "high" ) is used in certain situations such asliterature,formal education,or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation.[4]The H variety may have nonative speakerswithin the community. In cases of three dialects, the termtriglossiais used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the termdigraphiais used.

The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as inmedieval Europe,whereLatin(H) remained in formal use even ascolloquial speech(L) diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present-day dialect (as innorthern IndiaandPakistan,whereHindustani(L) is used alongside the standard registers ofHindi(H) andUrdu(H);Hochdeutsch(H) is used alongsideGerman dialects(L); theArab world,whereModern Standard Arabic(H) is used alongside othervarieties of Arabic(L); and China, whereStandard Chinese(H) is used as the official, literary standard and localvarieties of Chinese(L) are used in everyday communication).[3][5]Other examples include literaryKatharevousa(H) versus spokenDemotic Greek(L); literaryTamil(H) versus colloquial spoken Tamil (L);Indonesian,with itsbahasa baku(H) andbahasa gaul(L) forms;[6]Standard American English(H) versusAfrican-American Vernacular EnglishorHawaiian pidgin(L);[7]andliterary(H) versusspoken(L)Welsh.

Etymology[edit]

TheGreekword διγλωσσία (diglossía), from δί- (dí-,"two" ) and γλώσσα (glóssa,"language" ), meantbilingualism;it was given its specialized meaning "two forms of the same language" byEmmanuel Rhoidesin the prologue of hisParergain 1885. The term was quickly adapted intoFrenchasdiglossieby the Greek linguist anddemoticistIoannis Psycharis,with credit to Rhoides.[8]

TheArabistWilliam Marçaisused the term in 1930 to describe the linguistic situation inArabic-speaking countries. ThesociolinguistCharles A. Ferguson introduced the English equivalentdiglossiain 1959 in the title of an article. His conceptualization of diglossia describes a society with more than one prevalent language or the high variety, which pertains to the language used in literature, newspapers, and other social institutions.[9]The article has been cited over 4,000 times.[10]The term is particularly embraced among sociolinguists and a number of these proposed different interpretations or varieties of the concept.[11]

Language registers and types of diglossia[edit]

In his 1959 article,Charles A. Fergusondefines diglossia as follows:

DIGLOSSIA is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation.[4]

Here, diglossia is seen as a kind ofbilingualismin a society in which one of the languages has high prestige (henceforth referred to as "H" ), and another of the languages has low prestige ( "L" ). In Ferguson's definition, the high and low variants are always closely related.

Ferguson gives the example of standardized Arabic and says that, "very often, educated Arabs will maintain they never use L at all, in spite of the fact that direct observation shows that they use it constantly in ordinary conversation"[4]

Joshua Fishmanexpanded the definition of diglossia to include the use of unrelated languages as high and low varieties.[12]For example, inAlsacetheAlsatian language(Elsässisch) serves as (L) andFrenchas (H).Heinz Klosscalls the (H) variantexoglossiaand the (L) variantendoglossia.[13]

In some cases (especially withcreole languages), the nature of the connection between (H) and (L) is not one of diglossia but acontinuum;for example,Jamaican Creoleas (L) andStandard Englishas (H) in Jamaica. Similar is the case in theScottish Lowlands,withScotsas (L) andScottish Englishas (H).

(H) is usually the written language whereas (L) is the spoken language. In formal situations, (H) is used; in informal situations, (L) is used. Sometimes, (H) is used in informal situations and as spoken language when speakers of 2 different (L) languages and dialects or more communicate with each other (as alingua franca), but not the other way around.

One of the earliest examples was that ofMiddle Egyptian,the language in everyday use inAncient Egyptduring theMiddle Kingdom(2000–1650 BC). By 1350 BC, in theNew Kingdom(1550–1050 BC), the Egyptian language had evolved intoLate Egyptian,which itself later evolved intoDemotic(700 BC – AD 400). These two later forms served as (L) languages in their respective periods. But in both cases, Middle Egyptian remained the standard written, prestigious form, the (H) language, and was still used for this purpose until the fourth century AD, more than sixteen centuries after it had ceased to exist in everyday speech.

Another historical example is Latin,Classical Latinbeing the (H) andVulgar Latinthe (L); the latter, which is almost completely unattested in text, is the tongue from which theRomance languagesdescended.

The (L) variants are not just simplifications or "corruptions" of the (H) variants. In phonology, for example, (L) dialects are as likely to have phonemes absent from the (H) as vice versa. SomeSwiss Germandialects have three phonemes,/e/,/ɛ/and/æ/,in the phonetic space whereStandard Germanhas only two phonemes,/ɛ(ː)/(Berlin'Berlin',Bären'bears') and/eː/(Beeren'berries'). Jamaican Creole has fewer vowel phonemes than standard English, but it has additional palatal/kʲ/and/ɡʲ/phonemes.

Especially in endoglossia the (L) form may also be called "basilect",the (H) form"acrolect",and an intermediate form"mesolect".

Ferguson's classic examples include Standard German/Swiss German,Standard Arabic/Arabic vernaculars,French/CreoleinHaiti,andKatharevousa/DimotikiinGreece,[4]though the "low prestige" nature of most of these examples has changed since Ferguson's article was published. Creole is now recognized as a standard language in Haiti; Swiss German dialects are hardly low-prestige languages inSwitzerland(see Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory); and after the end of theGreek military regimein 1974, Dimotiki was made into Greece's sole standard language in 1976, and nowadays, Katharevousa is (with a few exceptions) no longer used. Harold Schiffman wrote about Swiss German in 2010, "It seems to be the case that Swiss German was once consensually agreed to be in a diglossic hierarchy with Standard German, but that this consensus is now breaking."[14]Code-switchingis also commonplace, especially in the Arabic world; according to Andrew Freeman, this is "different from Ferguson's description of diglossia which states that the two forms are in complementary distribution."[15][unreliable source?]To a certain extent, there is code switching and overlap in all diglossic societies, even German-speaking Switzerland.

Examples where the High/Low dichotomy is justified in terms of social prestige includeItalian dialectsandlanguagesas (L) andStandard Italianas (H) inItalyandGerman dialectsandStandard GermaninGermany.In Italy and Germany, those speakers who still speak non-standard dialects typically use those dialects in informal situations, especially in the family. In German-speakingSwitzerland,on the other hand, Swiss German dialects are to a certain extent even used in schools, and to a larger extent in churches. Ramseier calls German-speaking Switzerland's diglossia a "medial diglossia", whereas Felicity Rash prefers "functional diglossia".[16]Paradoxically, Swiss German offers both the best example of diglossia (all speakers are native speakers of Swiss German and thus diglossic) and the worst, because there is no clear-cut hierarchy. While Swiss Standard German is spoken in formal situations like in school, news broadcasts, and government speeches, Swiss Standard German is also spoken in informal situations only whenever a German Swiss is communicating with a German-speaking foreigner who it is assumed would not understand the respective dialect. Amongst themselves, the German-speaking Swiss use their respective Swiss German dialect, irrespective of social class, education or topic.

In most African countries, as well as some Asian ones, a European language serves as the official, prestige language, and local languages are used in everyday life outside formal situations. For example,Wolofis the everydaylingua francainSenegal,French being spoken only in very formal situations, and English is spoken in formal situations inNigeria,but native languages likeHausa,Igbo,andYorubaare spoken in ordinary conversation. However, a European language that serves as an official language can also act as alingua franca,being spoken in informal situations between speakers of two or more different languages to facilitate communication. Diglossia can exist between two dialects of a European language as well. For example, inCôte d'Ivoire,Standard Frenchis the prestige language used in business, politics, etc. whileIvorian Frenchis the daily language in the street, on the markets, and in informal situations in general; inMozambique,European Portugueseis used in formal situations, whileMozambican Portugueseis the spoken language in informal situations; andBritish Englishis used in formal situations in Nigeria, whileNigerian Englishis the spoken language in informal situations. In the countryside, local African dialects prevail. However, in traditional events, local languages can be used as prestige dialects: for example, a wedding ceremony between two young urbanBaoulé peoplewith poor knowledge of theBaoulé language(spoken in Côte d'Ivoire) would require the presence of elder family members as interpreters to conduct the ceremony in that language. Local languages, if used as prestige languages, are also used in writing materials in a more formal type of vocabulary. There are also European languages in Africa, particularlyNorth Africa,without official status that are used as prestige language: for example, inMorocco,whileModern Standard Arabicand recentlyTamazightare the only two official languages used in formal situations, withMoroccan Arabicand Amazigh dialects spoken in informal situations, while French andSpanishare also spoken in formal situations, making some Moroccans bilinguals or trilinguals in Modern Standard Arabic or Tamazight, French or Spanish, and Moroccan Arabic or Amazigh dialects. InSahrawi Arab Democratic Republic,the official languages are Modern Standard Arabic and Spanish, which are spoken in formal situations, whileHassaniya Arabicis spoken in informal situations, and Spanish is also spoken in informal situations. In Asia, thePhilippinesis the biggest example of such colonial exoglossia, with English since the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spanish before then (with a historic presence in place names, personal names, and loanwords in the local languages) and local Austronesian Philippine languages used for everyday situations;Timor-Lesteis in a similar situation with Portuguese. Most Asian countries instead have re-established a local prestige language (such as Hindi or Indonesian) and have at least partially phased out the colonial language, commonly English or Russian but also Dutch, French, and Portuguese in a few places, except for international, business, scientific, or interethnic communication; the colonial languages have also usually left many loanwards in the local languages.

Gender-based diglossia[edit]

InGhana,a dialect called "Student Pidgin"was traditionally used by men in all-male secondary schools, though an ever-increasing number of female students are now also using it due to social change.[17]

Gender-based oral speech variations are found in Arabic-speaking communities.Makkanmales are found to adopt more formal linguistic variants in theirWhatsAppmessages than their female counterparts, who tend to use more informal "locally prestigious" linguistic variants.[18]

AmongGarifuna (Karif)speakers inCentral America,men and women quite often have different words for the same concepts.[citation needed]

In specific languages[edit]

Greek[edit]

Further information:Greek language question

Greek diglossiabelongs to the category whereby, while the living language of the area evolves and changes as time passes by, there is an artificial retrospection to and imitation of earlier (more ancient) linguistic forms preserved in writing and considered to be scholarly and classic.[19]One of the earliest recorded examples of diglossia was during the first century AD, when Hellenistic Alexandrian scholars decided that, in order to strengthen the link between the people and the glorious culture of theGreek "Golden Age"(5th c. BC), people should adopt the language of that era. The phenomenon, called "Atticism",dominated the writings of part of theHellenistic period,theByzantineand Medieval era. Following theGreek War of Independenceof 1821 and in order to "cover new and immediate needs" making their appearance with "the creation of the Greek State",[20]scholars brought to life "Katharevousa" or "purist" language. Katharevousa did not constitute the natural development of the language of the people, the "Koine","Romeika",Demotic Greekor Dimotiki as it is currently referred to. It constituted an attempt to purify the language from vulgar forms such as words of foreign origin, especially Turkish and Slavic languages, but also French or Italian and replace them with ancient Attic forms and even by reaching down to Homericcleansedandrefinedwords.[citation needed]

Serbian[edit]

Diglossia in modernSerbian languageis the most obvious if we consider the usage of past tenses in High and Low varieties.[21][unreliable source]The High variety of the Serbian is based on theSerbo-Croatianlanguage of the former communist Yugoslavia. In the High form (newspapers, television, other mass media, education, and any other formal use or situation) all of the Serbian past tenses are replaced by thepresent perfecttense (which is in the Serbian school system either called "perfect tense" or the "past tense", but never "present perfect" since WW2).

On the other side, the Low form informal vernacular language contains several other past tenses (aorist,two past perfect forms and rarely imperfect, and one more with no name[clarification needed]), of which the aorist is the most important. In the Low form the present perfect tense with perfective verbs is not strictly treated as a past tense. In many rural and semi-rural parts of Serbia the aorist, despite being banished from any formal use, is the most frequent past tense form in the spoken informal language, more frequent even than the highly prestigious present perfect. When statements of peasants need to be written down by authorities, or published in any form, the past tenses are usually replaced by the present perfect tense.

The High form of Serbian today does have native speakers: those are usually younger and more educated parts of the population living in big cities, such as Belgrade (the capital of Serbia) and Novi Sad. Most of them are unable to differentiate the meanings among the present perfect tense and the other past tenses, which they do not use due to the influence of education and mass media.

Arabic[edit]

Main article:Varieties of Arabic

Diglossia may have appeared in Arabic when Muslim cities emerged during the early period of Islam.[22]

Sociolinguistics[edit]

As an aspect of study of the relationships between codes andsocial structure,diglossia is an important concept in the field ofsociolinguistics.At the social level, each of the two dialects has certain spheres of social interaction assigned to it and in the assigned spheres it is the only socially acceptable dialect (with minor exceptions). At the grammatical level, differences may involve pronunciation,inflection,and/orsyntax(sentence structure). Differences can range from minor (although conspicuous) to extreme. In many cases of diglossia, the two dialects are so divergent that they are distinct languages as defined bylinguists:they are notmutually intelligible.

Thomas Ricento, an author on language policy and political theory believes that there is always a "socially constructed hierarchy, indexed from low to high."[23]The hierarchy is generally imposed by leading political figures or popular media and is sometimes not the native language of that particular region. The dialect that is the originalmother tongueis almost always of lowprestige.Its spheres of use involve informal, interpersonalcommunication:conversation in the home, among friends, in marketplaces. In some diglossias, this vernacular dialect is virtually unwritten. Those who try to use it in literature may be severely criticized or even persecuted. The other dialect is held in high esteem and is devoted to written communication and formal spoken communication, such as university instruction, primary education, sermons, and speeches by government officials. It is usually not possible to acquire proficiency in the formal, "high" dialect without formal study of it. Thus in thosediglossicsocieties which are also characterized by extremeinequalityofsocial classes,most people are not proficient in speaking the high dialect, and if the high dialect is grammatically different enough, as in the case of Arabic diglossia, these uneducated classes cannot understand most of thepublic speechesthat they might hear on television and radio. The high prestige dialect (or language) tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular though often in a changed form.

In many diglossic areas, there is controversy andpolarizationof opinions of native speakers regarding the relationship between the two dialects and their respectivestatuses.In cases that the "high" dialect is objectively notintelligibleto those exposed only to thevernacular,some people insist that the two dialects are nevertheless a common language. The pioneering scholar of diglossia,Charles A. Ferguson,observed thatnative speakersproficient in the high prestige dialect will commonly try to avoid using the vernacular dialect with foreigners and may even deny its existence even though the vernacular is the only socially appropriate one for themselves to use when speaking to their relatives and friends. Yet another common attitude is that the low dialect, which is everyone'snative language,ought to be abandoned in favor of the high dialect, which presently is nobody's native language.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (2008).Language in South Asia.Cambridge University Press.p. 316.ISBN978-0-521-78141-1.English, the language of the despised colonial ruler, obviously was made unacceptable, and there emerged a general consensus that the national language of free and independent India would be "Hindustani," meaning Hindi/Urdu, essentially digraphic variants of the same spoken language, cf. C. King (1994) and R. King (2001). Hindi is written in Devanagari script and Urdu in a derivative of the Persian script, itself a derivative of Arabic.
  2. ^Cameron, Deborah; Panović, Ivan (2014).Working with Written Discourse.SAGE Publishing.p. 52.ISBN978-1-4739-0436-1.Hindi and Urdu, two major languages of the Indian subcontinent, have also featured frequently in discussions of digraphia, and have been described as varieties of one language, differentiated above all by the scripts normally used to write them.
  3. ^abGoswami, Krishan Kumar (1994).Code Switching in Lahanda Speech Community: A Sociolinguistic Survey.Kalinga Publications. p. 14.ISBN978-81-85163-57-4.In a Hindi-Urdu speech community, we find Hindi (high), Urdu (high) and Hindustani in triglossia (Goswami 1976, 1978) where Hindi and Urdu are in the state of horizontal diglossia while Hindustani and Hindi-Urdu are in the vertical diglossia.
  4. ^abcdFerguson, Charles(1959)."Diglossia".Word.15(2): 325–340.doi:10.1080/00437956.1959.11659702.S2CID239352211....diglossia differs from the more widespread standard-with-dialects in that no segment of the speech community in diglossia regularly uses H as a medium of ordinary conversation, and any attempt to do so is felt to be either pedantic and artificial (Arabic, Greek) or else in some sense disloyal to the community (Swiss German, Creole). In the more usual standard-with-dialects situation the standard is often similar to the variety of a certain region or social group (e.g. Tehran Persian, Calcutta Bengali) which is used in ordinary conversation more or less naturally by members of the group and as a superposed variety by others.
  5. ^Koul, Omkar Nath (1983).Language in Education.Indian Institute of Languages Studies. p. 43.In urban areas, a speech community in Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu developed as a result of the language contact and mixed glossia. The development of modern standard languages—Hindi and Urdu began in the early nineteenth century.
  6. ^Sneddon, James N. (2003)."Diglossia in Indonesian".Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.159(4): 519–549.doi:10.1163/22134379-90003741.
  7. ^Judkins, Cara (2020-05-28)."AAVE: The" Other "American English Variety".Wikitongues.Retrieved2022-03-26.
  8. ^Fernández, Mauro (1995). "Los Origenes del término diglosia: historia de una historia mal contada".Historiographia Linguistica.22(1–2): 163–195.doi:10.1075/hl.22.1-2.07fer.
  9. ^Buth, Randall; Notley, R. Steven (2014).The Language Environment of First Century Judaea: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels—Volume Two.Leiden: BRILL. p. 59.ISBN9789004264410.
  10. ^"Google Scholar".scholar.google.Retrieved2019-05-01.
  11. ^Pauwels, Anne (2010).Immigrant Dialects and Language Maintenance in Australia: The Case of the Limburg and Swabian Dialects.Dordrecht: Foris Publications. p. 8.ISBN978-9067651394.
  12. ^Fishman, Joshua(1967). "Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism".Journal of Social Issues.23(2): 29–38.doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00573.x.S2CID144875014.
  13. ^Kloss, Heinz(1968). "Notes concerning a language-nation typology". In Fishman, Joshua A.; Ferguson, Charles A.; Das Gupta, Jyotirindra (eds.).Language Problems of Developing Nations.Wiley. pp. 69–85.
  14. ^Schiffman, Harold."Classical and extended diglossia".Retrieved2010-09-10.
  15. ^Freeman, Andrew (9 December 1996)."Andrew Freeman's Perspectives on Arabic Diglossia".Andy Freeman's Homepage.Archived fromthe originalon 27 May 2010.Retrieved8 September2010.
  16. ^Rash, Felicity (1998).The German Language in Switzerland: Multilingualism, Diglossia and Variation.Berne: Peter Lang.ISBN0-8204-3413-2.
  17. ^"Language and gender in African contexts: Towards a research agenda".ResearchGate.Retrieved2019-05-01.
  18. ^Azhari, Hanadi (n.d.).Is the Diglossic Situation in Arabic Making Its Way into Texting? A Sociolinguistic Study of Phonological Variation in Makkan Arabic(PDF).Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2021-04-27.Retrieved2019-01-25– via cla-acl.ca.
  19. ^Triandaphyllidis, Manolis (1963).Apanta (Άπαντα) (vol.5).Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, Institute for Modern Greek Studies (Manolis Triandaphyllidis Foundation). p. 491.
  20. ^Σετάτος, Μιχάλης (1969).Ελληνοϊνδικά Μελετήματα.Θεσσαλονίκη: Κωνσταντινίδης. p. 15.
  21. ^Aco Nevski,'Past Tenses in Serbian language and modern trends of their use'
  22. ^Sayahi, Lotfi (2014).Diglossia and Language Contact: Language Variation and Change in North Africa.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 57.ISBN9780521119368.
  23. ^Ricento, Thomas (2012)."Political economy and English as a 'global' language".Critical Multilingualism Studies.1(1): 31–56. Archived fromthe originalon 2017-03-04.Retrieved2017-03-04.

Sources[edit]

  • Steven Roger Fischer, "diglossia—A History of Writing"[1][permanent dead link],Reaktion Books, April 4, 2004.ISBN978-1-86189-167-9
  • Ursula Reutner,"Vers une typologie pluridimensionnelle des francophonies", in: Ursula Reutner,Manuel des francophonies,Berlin/Boston, de Gruyter 2017, 9–64.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Look updiglossiain Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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