Mr Larbi BOUMEDDANE, MAB, Institute of Maintenance and Industrial Safety, University of Oran.
Topic: Write a short essay discussing with current examples the main characteristics of diglossia
according to Ferguson.
Dealing with different speech communities including Arabic ones, Ferguson defined the main
characteristics of diglossia in 1959 working on different linguistic or sociolinguistic levels.
First of all, diglossia is fundamentally determined by the dichotomization of H and L varieties.
Unlike L variety, H variety is highly codified and therefore prestigious.
Besides, the two varieties act in complementary distribution; that is to say, they fulfil different
purposes. In this respect, H variety is used for most written and formal spoken purposes. In fact, H variety
is the language of school, university, and administration. L variety, on the other hand, is used for casual
functions such as daily conversation. Nevertheless, the two of them may overlap. As a case in point, the
Algerian teacher often switches to informal non-codified Arabic when lecturing.
In addition, H and L varieties differ in learning background. Whereas the former is acquired at
school by formal education, the latter in the home as the first language. Hence, unlike L variety, H variety
is not used by any interlocutor and not everywhere. Indeed, contrarily to L variety, H variety lacks vitality.
Moreover, diglossic speech communities may function with a third language that is neither highly
prestigious nor stigmatized. This situation exists in Egypt where Cairo’s dialect has gained some
importance in comparison with the other local regional varieties.
Furthermore, Ferguson claims that the H and L varieties of any diglossic speech community are
genetically related; thus, they have a great deal in common. However, they differ from each other lexically,
phonetically, phonologically, and grammatically. By way of illustration, unlike Oran’s dialect, classical
Arabic does not include both phonemes / v / and /g/ and does not lack vowel utterance. For instance, to
mean ‘boy’, the speaker produces / w ʊ l d / in Oran’s dialect and / w ʌ l ʌ d ʊ n / in classical Arabic. To
address one single individual, the speaker uses two different pronouns namely anta for male and anti for
female in classical Arabic, and only one pronoun in Tlemcen’s dialect namely entina regardless of gender.
There exist pairs of equivalent words in the Arabic language as far as its codified variety and regional
varieties are concerned such as (raa, chaf) meaning ‘saw’ in Algerian Arabic; (mada, chou) meaning ‘what’
in Syrian Arabic; (jayida, kwayiza) meaning ‘good’ or ‘fine’ in Egyptian Arabic; (kathir, barcha) meaning
‘much’ in Tunisian Arabic; and (takallam, dwi) meaning the imperative singular form of ‘speak’ in
Moroccan Arabic.
Another major feature to diglossia is its non-universality. Ferguson argues that diglossia is not
obtained in every speech community granted that not everyone functions with genetically-related H and L
varieties. Cases in point are Paraguay functioning with Spanish, which is a Romance language, and
Guarani, which is an Indian one, and Mali functioning with French, which is a Romance language too, and
Bambara, an African one.
In his view, diglossia is also characterized by its changeability. For instance, upon the Norman
Conquest in 1066, English, which had been used as the H variety in Britain, became the L variety there.
On the other hand, French was established as Britain’s H variety. Actually, French was rendered the
language of administration whereas English was reduced to a peasant jargon. But, such a shift cannot
always occur so fast. Ferguson claims that diglossia often takes a long time to change. In fact, diglossia is
also marked by its stability. A case in point is the evolution throughout the Middle Ages of both French
and Spanish to finally become as prestigious as their ancestor language namely Latin.
As a conclusion, diglossia encompasses the notions of co-existence, status, function, acquisition,
heritage, relatedness, and status-change under conditions that vary from one certain speech community to
another.
