INGL 8007
DIGLOSSIA & POLYGLOSSIA
Dr. A. Pousada
Ferguson’s depiction of diglossia
Ferguson, Charles. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word 15:325--340.
‘A diglossic situation exists in a society when it has two distinct codes which
show clear functional separation; that is, one code is employed in one set of
circumstances and the other in an entirely different set’ (p. 87).
Examples Ferguson used were: Katharevousa (‘puristic’) and Demotic Greek,
Haitian Creole and French, Swiss German and Standard German, and classical
vs. vernacular Arabic. In each pair, the first language variety is the High variety,
and the second is the Low variety.
High varieties are used for sermons, formal lectures, legal and administrative
transactions, radio broadcasting, newspaper editorials, literature, etc. They tend
to be highly standardized.
Low varieties are used when directing servants, in casual conversations, within
family and social groups, on popular radio and television, etc. They tend not to
have established orthographies and are usually used in literature only to
characterize lower class people. (An exception would be the work of Chaucer
during the Norman control of Britain.)
Ferguson (1959) proposed that diglossic pairs could be differentiated on the
basis of the following features:
Prestige
Literary heritage
Acquisition
Standardization
Stability
Grammar
Lexicon
Phonology
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Fishman’s expansion of diglossia
Fishman, Joshua. 1967. “Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with
and without bilingualism.” Journal of Social Issues 23:29--38.
Ferguson’s concept of diglossia involved related varieties of a single language.
Fishman extended Ferguson’s idea to include completely separate languages
along with dialects or registers that were reserved for specific social functions.
For Fishman, diglossia is: “the stable existence of two or more complementary
and non-conflicting idioms used for contact within the same group. Diglossia
exists, therefore, when one language is reserved for certain domains and one or
more other languages are reserved for other domains...” Situations where this
functionality breaks down ( i.e., where one variety begins to perform some of the
functions of the other) are called diglossic leaking.
Examples given by Fishman for each quadrant of this model are:
1. Both diglossia and bilingualism: Paraguay, Swiss German cantons, pre-WWI
Eastern European Jewish males
2. Bilingualism without diglossia--circumstances of rapid social change, social
unrest, dislocated immigrants, transitional state
3. Diglossia without bilingualism--Czarist Russian aristocrats, many African
nations today,
4. Neither diglossia nor bilingualism--only very small, isolated, undifferentiated
speech communities--easier to hypothesize than to find
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Double over-lapping diglossia or triglossia (example of Tanzania)
Mkilifi, M. 1978. Triglossia and Swahili-English bilingualism in Tanzania. In
Advances in the study of societal multilingualism, ed. J. Fishman. The Hague:
Mouton.
In this form of diglossia, one variety serves as the High variety in one pair and
the Low variety in the overlapping pair. In the example below of Tanzania,
Swahili is the High variety in the Swahili-Vernacular diglossia and the Low variety
in the English-Swahili diglossia.
English
High
High
Swahili
Low
Low
Vernacular
Since the two diglossias interact with the division between rural and urban
communities, perhaps a better way to represent the situation is as follows:
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Double nested diglossia (example from India)
Gumperz, J.J. 1964. Linguistic and social
communities. American Anthropologist 66.
interaction
in
two
In the double-nested situation, there are a High and Low variety, each
of which has a High and Low variety of its own.
Oratorical style (High Hindi)
Hindi (High)
Conversational Style (Low Hindi)
Saf boli (High Khalapur)
Khalapur(Low)
Moti boli (Low Khalapur)
Linear polyglossia (examples of Malaysia)
Platt, J. & Weber, H. (1980). English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status,
Features, Functions. Oxford University Press.
Sometimes the community’s speech repertoire is even more complex and can
only be represented as choices among a long list of linear possibilities. Such is
the case in Singapore and Malaysia.
Formal Malaysian English
Bahasa Malaysian
Mandarin
Colloquial Malaysian English
Dominant Chinese language
‘Native’ Chinese language
Other Chinese languages
Bazaar Malay
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Fasold’s redefinition of diglossia – Broad Diglossia
All of the changes in the thinking about diglossia led Fasold to propose a new
definition which encompasses all of the aforementioned possibilities.
Broad Diglossia is: “the reservation of highly valued segments of a community’s
linguistic repertoire (which are not the first to be learned, but are learned later
and more consciously, usually through formal education), for situations perceived
as more formal and guarded; and the reservation of less highly valued segments
(which are learned first with little or no conscious effort), of any degree of
linguistic relatedness to the higher valued segments, from stylistic differences to
separate languages, for situations perceived as more informal and intimate.
(Fasold 1997:53)
Under this broad definition, the term diglossia is then best understood as
referring to a continuum of formality-intimacy, rather than to two linguistic
varieties.