Diglossia
The concept of diglossia gained fame with Charles
Ferguson and his influential article of 1959, in which
diglossia is used to refer to a situation “where two
varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the
community, with each having a definite role to play”
(Ferguson, 1972:232).
Ferguson’s definition makes a division between
a High (H) variety and a Low (L) variety. Both varieties
are linguistically related to one another (genetically
related), but they are also significantly different from
one another.
Ferguson explained diglossia on the basis of four speech
communities:
Arab World : Standard Arabic vs. Colloquial Arabic
Greece: Katharevousa vs. Dimotiki
Haiti: French vs. Haitian Creole
German-speaking Switzerland: Standard German vs.
Swiss German
Ferguson set out to expound this sociolinguistic condition
under nine rubrics which are prioritized according to
function, prestige, literary heritage, acquisition,
standardization, stability, grammar, lexicon, and
phonology.
The functional distribution, or the specialization of function, is
the chief feature of diglossia. This implies that H and L are
used in different settings and for different purposes.
H, generally the classical or the standard variety, is allocated to
official and formal contexts, whereas L, the non-standard
variety (varieties), constitutes the usual medium of interaction
in spontaneous and informal contexts.
Prestige: H is highly valued (had greater prestige) than L is.
Literary Heritage: the literature is all in the H-variety; no written
uses of L exist, except for `dialect' poetry and advertising.
Acquisition: L-variety is the mother tongue; H-variety is generally
learned through schooling.
Standardization: H is strictly standardized (grammar books,
dictionaries, written form); L is rarely standardized
Stability: Diglossias are generally stable, persisting for centuries or
even millennia. Occasionally L-varieties gain domains and
displace the H-variety.
Grammar: H has a more complex grammar (complex tense systems,
gender systems, etc)
Lexicon: Lexicon is often somewhat shared, but H has vocabulary
that L lacks, and vice-versa.
Phonology: Two kinds of phonemic systems are discerned.
By 1967 Ferguson’s original concept had undergone
some changes when Fishman refined the definition arguing
that diglossia can also be extended to cover situations where
two (or more) unrelated, or at at least historically distant,
language varieties are used for different functions. This is
referred to as ‘extended diglossia’.
Fishman illustrates extended diglossia with reference
to Paraguay where Spanish is used in formal contexts, such
as education, and Guarani is reserved to the day-to-day
communication. Spanish and Guarani are unrelated
languages.
Practice
Characterizing Diglossia in the Arab World
