Diglossia

Abstract

Abstract In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions. Perhaps the most familiar example is the standard language and regional dialect as used, say, in Italian or Persian, where many speakers speak their local dialect at home or among family or friends of the same dialect area but use the standard language in communicating with speakers of other dialects or on public occasions. There are, however, quite different examples of the use of two varieties of a language in the same speech community. In Baghdad the Christian Arabs speak a ‘Christian Arabic’ dialect when talking among themselves but speak the general Baghdad dialect, ‘Muslim Arabic’, when talking in a mixed group. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in studying the development and characteristics of standardized languages (see especially Kloss, 1952, with its valuable introduction on standardization in general), and it is in following this line of interest that the present study seeks to examine carefully one particular kind of standardization where two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play. The term ‘diglossia’ is introduced here, modeled on the French diglossie, which has been applied to this situation, since there seems to be no word in regular use for this in English; other languages of Europe generally use the word for ‘bilingualism’ in this special sense as well. (The terms ‘language’, ‘dialect’, and ‘variety’ are used here without precise definition. It is hoped that they occur sufficiently in accordance with established usage to be unambiguous for the present purpose.