Diglossia and Bilingualism: functional restrictions on language choice

Presented by:
Dorias, Erica Jean
Espineli, Sheika
Malimban, Darlene
  Diglossia – The use of two varieties of the same languange in different social contexts
 Varieties of Diglossia:
High (H)
o formal style associated with power and formality
o it is based in the written languange that is used in public speeches.
o Learn by instruction.

Low (L)

o Used by people for vernacular purposes in their homes, in the street,and other
informal contexts.
o Acquired spontaneously in the home.
o Colloquial style
 Table 8.1 Complementary functional distribution of varieties in Bengali (adapted from
Chatterjee 1986: 298)

FUNCTION HIGH LOW

Public address of all sorts + -

Scripted speech + -

News broadcast + -

News journals + -

Creative literature except + -

novels, dramas and short stories
Narrative description in novels + -
and short stories

Formal letters + -

Class Lectures + -

Dialogues in novels and - +

dramas

Informal personal letters - +

Conversation with family - +

members

Instruction to workmen, - +
servants and subordinates

 Writing:
 The social motivations of domain separation are many, but the introduction of writing is
incontrovertibly of crucial importance (Coulmas 1987, 2003)
 H is used in writing. It may also used for some functions in speech and L may be used in
writing too.

 Standardization:

• H is generally more highly standard than L.

• Tend to developed a code of religious and administrative-ceremonial practices
recognizably different from the more volatile codes of ordinary life.
  Linguistic Ideology
• Common themes of linguistic ideology revolve around notions of a language's beauty,
authenticity, purity and sacredness.
• Greek diglossia, Sotiropoulos (1992:164) claims that 'graphicentrism', defined as the
primacy of the written language, premeates the linguistic ideology of Greek culture.

 The Genetic Question

 Fishman (1967) made a strong case to extend the notion of

diglossia to include such cases of bilingualism, provided that the functional domain
allocation sufficiently resembles
 Ferguson’s (1959) ‘classical’ cases of genetic diglossia
• Domain specific arrangements of both genetically related and genetically unrelated codes
obscures rather than elucidates sociolinguistic theory.
 Bilingualism- is the phenomenon of speaking and understanding two or more
languages. The term can refer to individuals (individual bilingualism) as well as
to an entire society (social bilingualism).
The term can also refer to the corresponding scientific research which studies the
phenomenon itself.
 Relevant Community
• Language choice takes place on two levels:
• Macro-sociolinguistic -study of language in relation to society
• Micro-sociolinguistic -study of society in relation to language focuses such as social
factor, exactly the interaction between the language and dialect.

 Status and Function

• Status - What people can do with a Language
- has to do with whether a particular language has a written norm is used in
writing, is represented in a body of literature has a reference grammar, technical
terminology, etc.
• Functions - What they actually do with it
• Demographic strength - an important variable properties of a Language

 Domain

• A theoritical concept, it refers to an aggregate of locales of communication.

Local context
• a certain predictive potential, as it tells us what the most expected choice would be under
certain circumstances. However, it does not provide for unexpected choices or for a
 method to evaluate the impact made by such a choice and its consequences for the
interaction.

 Accomodation Theory

• Developed by Giles and his associates

• Which investigates, motivations and consequences of changes in Languages styles.

(Giles, Bourhis and Taylor 1977)

• It assumes that people are motivated mutually to adjust their speech styles.

 Networks
 Individual Language choice in multilingual societies often depends on and is predictable
on the basis pf networks
 on the density and diversity of a speaker's network and his or her position therein,
Language choice takes place.

 Measuring bilingualism
 The Bilingualism of one member of a multilingual community differs from that of other.
 A Bilingual community is not necessarily composed of Bilinguals individuals only;
rather, it is the percentage of Bilingual speakers with variable degrees of competence in
the languages involved that distinguishes multilingual communities from one another.
 Additive Bilingualism- where an individual’s repertoire is extended by an additional
language
 Subtractive bilingualism- where the acquisition of an L2 results in the replacement of the
speaker’s L1.

 Cooperation
 Speakers of different languages have found ways to communicate with each other and
thus regulate their social life.