553244439-ferguson-diglossia-revisited-1996

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<p>Borrower: RAPID:MDY Call #: PJ6073 U53 1996 Lending String: Location: Main Patron: Journal Title: edited by Alaa Elgibali ODYSSEY ENABLED Volume: Issue: Charge Month/Year: 1996Pages: 49-67 Maxcost: Article Author: Ferguson, Charles Shipping Address: NEW: Davis Family Library Article Title: Diglossia revisited Fax: Ariel: Imprint: Email: ILL Number: -7545452</p><p>3 EPILOGUE: DIGLOSSIA REVISITED Charles A. Ferguson* 1. In 1959 I published an article called "Diglossia" in the journal Word in which I tried to characterize a certain type of language situation. Since that time hundreds of articles and a score of books have been published on the topic of diglossia, most of them referring directly to the 1959 pa- per, which itself has been reprinted in various anthologies and translated into a number of languages. And the production of diglossia articles shows no sign of slowing down (examples of recent ones: Berger 1990; Khubchandani 1989; Kremnitz 1987). An author may feel a certain amount of gratification when a piece of writing is widely read and cited and seems to have contributed to a field of inquiry. The gratification may, however, be mixed with other feelings when the author finds that his message is often misunderstood, his terminology is extended in direc- tions he does not always approve, and-most of all-he finds weaknesses in his own original conceptualization and presentation. On several occasions between 1980 and 1990, I have been able to air some of these authorial feelings by being invited to speak on 'diglossia revisited, 2 and this volume gives me a chance to put some of these feelings in print. For my contribution to the volume, I want first to indicate briefly what I believe I was trying to do in that 1959 article, then note several issues that were neglected or mishandled in that article- points sometimes realized on my own, sometimes painfully called to my attention by critics-and finally to point out directions I would hope to see future research take to strengthen and establish this whole field of inquiry. 49</p><p>50 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 51 2. Original Intention Swiss French, like any language, has register variations: it is possible to What was I trying to do? I wanted to characterize a particular kind of lan- do sports announcing in this French as well as to write chemical ab- guage situation, taking a clear case that was relatively easy and uncontro- stracts. versial to characterize. However, the idea of doing that was to make the Italian is the third largest language in Switzerland. People speak a kind clear case just one slot in a taxonomy of some sort. I hoped other people of local Swiss Italian, Ticinese, which varies from village to village, would write articles on other clear cases in order to develop a fairly elabo- with, however, sufficient commonality so that it can be readily under- rate taxonomy of language situations. Ultimately, that taxonomy would stood throughout the entire area of Italian-speaking Switzerland. But there be replaced by some set of principles or frame of reference in terms of is another variety of the language, sometimes called Friulian, a variety of which this kind of thinking about language and this kind of research north Italian used for a range of circumstances, and of course there is should be done. My goals, in ascending order, were: clear case, taxon- school Italian, the language of books, newspapers, broadcasting, and edu- omy, principles, theory. cated speech. These variations exist on top of and alongside one another, I felt it was reasonable to start by describing a clear case. Languages and but not layered the way the German dialects are and of considerably more linguistic communities come in many forms. A language may be rela- variety than the French situation. tively homogeneous or dialectally highly diverse; its users may be nonlit- Finally, there is Romansch, the fourth national language of Switzer- erate, literate, literate in a divergent, specialized variety of the language or land. It has no standard variety, though it is written and is used as a in another language altogether. A linguistic community may be essen- medium of instruction for reading and writing in the early grades of tially monolingual or pervasively multilingual; a bilingual community school. It is written in four different spelling systems, because it is used may delimit its use of the respective languages by social strata, ethnic in four different dialect areas; no one of them is supreme, and there is no groups, communicative functions, or a combination of these. And so on. sign that any one of them will emerge as standard. All these differences, it may reasonably be assumed, will be reflected to These are four different situations in a nation that has faced language some degree in details of linguistic structure and in the paths of language variation for centuries without the emergence of any striking similarity or change. Out of this welter of possibilities I wanted to pick a type that was parallelism of patterns of use across the languages. That is the kind of dif- clearly identifiable, but not unique, i.e. that had many examples around ference in language situations in which I was interested, and which the world. seemed to have implications for the writing of grammars and for theories For those linguists who do not give much thought to the diversity of of language and language Though there could be an indefinitely forms of language and linguistic community, a convenient example is large number of different language situations, I felt that if we looked at Switzerland, a nation with four languages and four different linguistic sit- the language situations of the world, there would be a limited number of First, there is German-speaking Switzerland. It has very diver- identifiable major types. Of course individual instances of a type would gent dialect variation from one canton to the next; there is some indica- differ in detail, but I expected that they would show sufficient commonal- tion that the variety in Zurich is now beginning to spread at the expense ity that linguists would recognize them as fundamentally the same kind of other varieties, but scholars debate even this point. On top of the di- of situation. verse dialect German, there is standard German (Hochdeutsch or Schrift- For example, there are many places in the world where there is a so- sprache), which is quite different from the varieties of dialect German. called 'creole (Holm 1988:9). In that type of situation there is Schriftsprache is used for perhaps 90 percent of written purposes in Ger- a range of variation from a 'high' variety, which is typically though not man-speaking Switzerland and also, but to a much smaller extent, for necessarily a form of a (previous) colonial language, to an extremely dif- formal spoken purposes, such as lectures at universities and regular news ferent variety showing unmistakable signs of prior pidginization. Mem- broadcasts. bers of the community shift up and down this scale in speaking, depend- French is the language with the next largest number of speakers in ing on such factors as their relative social position, varying communica- Switzerland. Swiss French is relatively homogeneous, with very little di- tive functions, and individual interactional strategies. In such communi- alect variation. Once these were Franco-Provençal dialects that were quite ties there is a significant sector of the population with good conversa- different from other kinds of French, but these differences have been tional control of the 'acrolect,' as the highest variety has come to be smoothed out and absorbed into standard French, with the exception of a called, although there may be few people-or even no one-for whom few Swiss expressions, and a few local dialect differences. Of course, that is the primary variety acquired at home as a child. Or, there are many places in the world where there is a standard variety</p><p>52 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 53 of a language together with a range of regional and social dialect varia- another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education tion, and where there are those who essentially speak the standard variety and is used for most written or formal spoken purposes, but is not used as their mother tongue, even though for many in the community the stan- by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation" (1959:336). dard is superposed on their local dialect (Hudson 1980:32-34). In the Nine variables were spelled out in the article by which I tried to character- original diglossia paper I mentioned Italy and Persian-speaking Iran as ex- amples of this standard-with-dialects situation. ize this particular language situation. It should be clear why I would have been happy had other scholars seen Thus, I could have chosen as my 'clear case' the creole continuum, or this as one clear case and taken up the challenge to describe other clear the standard-with-dialects, or any of a number of other recognizable, cases-for example, standard-with-dialects, creole continuum, bilingual- widely instantiated types of language situation. What I chose, however, ism with high/low functional allocation-until a wide variety of language was what I called taking a term already in use for Arabic, in a situations in the world were classified. Though such a taxonomy might situation similar to that of Swiss German, as described above. In addition not ever manage to incorporate all the possible situations in the world, we to whatever ordinary ways of talking there were in the community, there could begin to get some idea of the relation between language situation was one superposed variety to be used for written purposes and for many and linguistic structure, the typical sources and outcomes of major situa- formal spoken purposes, but not spoken by anyone as the ordinary tion types, and appropriate methods of analysis. We could then have been medium of conversation. It is important to make it clear that this situa- able to seek answers to such questions as these: What are likely social tion differs from the standard-with-dialect variation, such as Italy, for ex- conditions under which one type arises or gives way to another? What are ample, where there are those who essentially speak standard Italian as typical routes of change from one to another in terms of linguistic struc- their mother tongue and use it in everyday conversation. It is also clear ture? How are the different types reflected in linguistic structure and how that diglossia differs from a creole continuum such as Jamaica, where are such differences to be presented in the writing of grammars and the many people control and use the acrolect in ordinary conversation and construction of linguistic theory? where the extreme 'basilectal' varieties, as they are called, are clearly the I would also have welcomed more detailed studies of any of the particu- outcome of a pidginization process at some earlier time. Also, the lar cases I first proposed. The four cases I described are not identical; each boundary between the high variety and the vernacular ('low' variety) in one is quite different in some respects from the other three, though they diglossia is behaviorally and attitudinally sharper than in creole continua, have many features in common. It should be possible through a careful although intermediate varieties always do occur in diglossia situations, as study of any of these particular cases to point out what conditions matter noted in the original article. Finally, diglossia in the sense was defining most in differentiating among subtypes and to locate other instances of was not the same as the situation in which two different (related or the subtypes. Actually, a number of studies of the four cases have been unrelated) languages have a functional distribution similar to that of published since 1959, some of them really excellent, offering more details diglossia (i.e. a 'high' language and a 'low' language). One of my about the case being examined or providing information updating the sit- primary interests was the relation of language situation to linguistic uation as I had described it, thus giving valuable indications of trends, al- structure, and I assumed that these other situations would differ from though necessarily from a shallow time depth. My disappointment in this diglossia in their linguistic correlates and in the linguistic nature of their connection is that few of these restudies have shown much interest in a possible outcomes. comparative perspective or a careful identification of subtypes. I wanted to describe the kind of situation in which the ordinary formal Or, I would have welcomed some greater step toward generality, toward language of the community is one that no one speaks without special ef- some kind of theory. Of the hundreds of articles only a handful over the fort and no one uses in ordinary conversation: it is acquisitionally and years have seen the characterization of language situations as a theoretical functionally superposed to the primary variety of the language. What I did issue and have tried to contribute to its investigation in that spirit (some was to describe four examples of my clear case: Arabic, Swiss German, examples: Fishman 1967; Kloss 1976; Wexler 1971; several papers in Kr- Haitian Creole, Modern Greek. I came up with a fairly precise definition ishnamurti 1986). Many of the studies of diglossia have been single case of diglossia: "A relatively stable language situation in which, in addition studies that are relatively sterile in the line of argument; the authors argue to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or whether a particular language situation is or is not diglossia, typically de- regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often fending the author's initial assumption about the classification. It is only grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large very recently that some authors have attempted the kind of taxonomizing and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in that I was looking for, at a level where my original clear case fits some-</p><p>54 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 55 where in a multidimensional classification that includes a wide variety of by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surround- situations (e.g. Ammon 1989). ing areas by weaknesses in the lines of communication" (Gumperz How did I come up with the original four cases? I was working in the 1968:463). In Gumperz' view a speech community may be a very small Arab world at the time, and Arabic was therefore the first language that group or a vast population, depending on the level of abstraction desired, presented itself to me as such a case. Then it was clear that Greek was and it may be monolingual or multilingual. For Labov a speech commu- quite similar in certain respects. But the fairly trivial thing that I found nity is defined "by participation in a set of shared norms [including] overt alike in these four cases that really struck me was that in popular political types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of magazines the texts of the articles would be in the H (high) variety but if variation" (Labov 1968:251). Labov apparently deals only with monolin- there were political cartoons, the captions under the cartoons would often gual speech communities, but he allows for communities at different lev- be in the L (low) variety. It struck me as an astonishing kind of coinci- els of abstraction, recognizing nested subcommunities, for example, of dence that Arabic, Swiss, German, Modern Greek, and Haitian the worldwide English speech community (e.g. American English, French/Creole would have this exact same feature. The observation of this Philadelphia English). In a recent formulation he emphasizes the sharing striking coincidence put me on the track of isolating these as a clear case of a particular precise pattern of variation: "The phonological pattern of of one type of language situation-diglossia. the short a split, which uniquely defines Philadelphia as a linguistic unit, 3. Original Weaknesses is uniform across social classes, ethnic groups, and family and friendship networks" (Labov 1989:2). Of the many weaknesses that can be attributed to the original diglossia ar- The concept of speech community that was implicit in the 1959 article ticle, let me mention seven that I have found especially salient and trou- and should have been specified could be phrased something like this: a I would certainly treat differently if I were to write the social group sharing features of language structure, use, and attitudes that article today. functions as a sociolinguistic unit for the operation of linguistic variation 3.1. Object of description and/or change; it may be monolingual or multilingual (Ferguson 1978), What is diglossia a case of? In the 1959 article, I talked about Arabic as and it may be at any level of abstraction for which the definition holds. 'having diglossia, almost as though diglossia were a special talent or a Thus the language varieties of a diglossia situation are properties of the disease or some other unusual property of a language. But in what sense relevant speech community (more on varieties in 3.2 below). Note that does a language have this characteristic? It is clear that I was not describ- this use of 'speech and 'linguistic interchange- ing languages, but rather linguistic communities of some sort. Of course, ably to include the three of structure, use, and attitudes is an- both terms are difficult to define. What constitutes a language is not an- other way to handle the valid point made by Caton (1991), who calls at- swered easily: there is no clear-cut way of giving an answer that will tention to the difference between behavior on the one hand and attitudes please the majority of linguists. The question is this: What do two lan- and beliefs about behavior on the other, using 'speech to re- guage varieties or linguistic systems have to have in common in order to fer to structure + use and 'linguistic community to refer to atti- have them count as a single language? And linguists have no principled tudes/beliefs (see 3.5 below). way to answer that question (see 3.3 below). It is, if anything, even more The expression 'language situation' was used in the 1959 article with- difficult to answer the question of what two societies or social groups out any intention of its being a technical term, but it came to be used as have to have in common before we can say that they are the same speech such by some linguists, sociolinguists, and sociologists of language (e.g. community. Curiously enough, however, I did not make it clear in the ar- the definition in Nikol'skij 1976:79-80: "aggregate of languages, sublan- ticle that I was describing speech communities rather than languages, and guages, and functional styles which serve communication within an ad- it is possible to read the article as though the descriptions are of lan- ministrative territorial unit or ethnic community"). It has the advantage of guages. This is a central issue that has received the attention of later crit- being usable whether or not one is claiming that the area or polity being ics. characterized constitutes a speech Two of the most influential definitions of speech community in 3.2. Variety roughly the sense in which I would like to use it are those of Gumperz What was meant by the term 'variety' in the 1959 article? The term was and Labov both of which appeared in Fishman's Readings (Fishman used to avoid specifying the exact nature of the entity being described. In 1968). For Gumperz a speech community is a social group "held together a monograph that was already in preparation at the time of the diglossia</p><p>56 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 57 paper, Gumperz and I chose the term 'variety' to refer to "the minimal 3.3. Linguistic distance unit which serves as the 'normal' object of linguistic description" Another shortcoming of the original article was the failure to make clear (Ferguson and Gumperz 1960), giving an extended definition of the con- how far apart (or how close together) the high and low varieties have to be cept and then proceeding to define 'a language' in terms of it. If we as- for a language situation to be characterized as diglossia. My intention was sume that there are two basic dimensions of variation in language, dialect that the users would always view the two as the same language: I ex- variation correlating with the place of the speaker in the community and cluded cases where superposed on an ordinary conversational language is a register variation correlating with occasions of use, then the H and L vari- totally unrelated language used for formal purposes, as in the often-cited eties of diglossias are register variants, not dialect variants. There may of case of Spanish and in Paraguay. Though I did not make it clear course be dialect variation in either the H variety or the L variety in the article why I felt the term should apply only to situations in which (typically more in L), and there may even be (regional and/or social) di- the varieties were closely related, it was because I was interested in look- alect variation in the patterns of use, the 'functional allocations' of the re- ing at the sources and outcomes of different language situations. Where spective varieties. But the H and L varieties represent variation by occa- does a diglossic situation come from? What will happen to it over time? sions of use, i.e. individual users of the language have the H-L variation My feeling was that if you have two varieties in this H-L relationship as part of their repertoire of variation that can be drawn on for use with that are fairly closely related to one another, one kind of outcome will re- different addressees, topics, settings, etc., and their pattern of variation is sult (e.g. certain kinds of lexical borrowings will take place, certain forms to a large extent and part of the community repertoire. of phonological and syntactic convergence will be likely, and so forth). Since both the H and L varieties in diglossia typically include within However, if the H and L varieties are unrelated languages, then the out- them other register variation, it might be convenient to have a label that comes will ultimately be quite different; different kinds of borrowing will recognizes this status, and I have sometimes used the take place and different types of intermediate forms will result, and the terms 'macro-register' and 'hyper-register.' Britto applies the term overall history of the language situation will be different. 'diasystem' to H and L varieties in diglossia because of the identifiable Back in the summer of 1964 an SSRC-sponsored Seminar on Sociolin- dialect and register variation within them (Britto 1986:14-16, 304-305); guistics was offered at Indiana University, bringing together sociologists, since this term has been used for other concepts, I will continue to use the anthropologists, and linguists. On one of the first days of the seminar, term 'register' or the even vaguer 'variety' in this discussion. one sociologist asked the linguists to tell them how we measured how far It is important to recognize that register variation of the diglossia type apart two languages were. They argued that such a measure could be use- as well as many other kinds of register variation offer a challenge not only ful to them in their studies of language and social status. It was difficult to linguistic theories, but also to variationist studies. Most of the latter to convince them that not only did linguists not have such a measure, but explore the variability of ways of saying the same thing in a given speech that most of us were not interested in devising one. Moreover, even if we community. But register variation must account for the fact that very of- were interested in the question, we agreed that it would be nearly impos- ten speakers vary linguistic structure even when they are not trying to say sible to devise a measure that would rate linguistic distance overall, since the same thing differently. For example, between sports announcer talk we had no idea how to weight the obviously differing phonological, syn- and the language of chemical abstracts, it is almost impossible to find tactic, and lexical distances between varieties. Linguists are, on the sentences that mean essentially the same thing, yet systematic differences whole, still reluctant to quantify the remarks they easily make in conver- in phonology, syntax, and lexicon occur between the two varieties (cf. sation, such as that two languages under discussion are roughly as similar Ferguson 1983). I happen to think that the study of register variation is as Spanish and Portuguese, or Gothic and Old Icelandic, or Russian and more critical than the study of dialect variation. For dialect variation we Polish. Percentages of shared cognates of a certain kind or number of have the research methods of traditional dialectology as well as the varia- shared phonological innovations between two 'sister' languages are dis- tionist methods of Labov and others (cf. Chambers and Trudgill 1980), cussed with some seriousness, but we are not much closer than we were but we do not yet have satisfactory ways of talking about register varia- in 1964 to agreeing upon a measure of linguistic distance. tion. It was certainly a weakness of the diglossia article that I did not ad- In recent years, linguists such as Fasold and Britto have raised this dress the troublesome question of register variation. The term in question of how far apart H and L varieties have to be in a 'true' diglossic this sense had only recently been coined (Reid 1956), but variation of this situation. They have developed no absolute measures, but Britto has pro- general kind was discussed under the rubric of and superposed vari- posed a set of terms: The varieties must be distant, as in Ara- eties' in the Ferguson-Gumperz monograph then in preparation.</p><p>58 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 59 bic, not 'super-optimally,' as with Spanish and or 'sub- ample, one of the reasons for the ambivalence of the Swiss Germans as with formal-informal styles or registers in English (Britto about their Hochdeutsch is the fact that it is shared with much of the 1986:10-12, 321). The need remains for developing scales of distance in German-speaking world. The Swiss want to be regarded as Swiss, not language structure, language use, and language attitudes, since all three of Germans, and they persist in using features of lexicon and phonology that these dimensions can he shown to have effects in language change and in distinguish them from non-Swiss users of Hochdeutsch even when they social change. know and can produce the more German-sounding, 'standard' forms. A 3.4. Larger picture large part of Schiffman's paper (1991) is devoted to the question of shared Hs and Ls. Another weakness that people have called my attention to was my failure to mention that diglossia is very often part of a larger picture. For exam- 3.5. Attitudes ple, in Lebanon, there are many who make use of the H variety of Arabic Several critics have complained that I did not sufficiently separate peo- as well as their local Lebanese dialect, and in addition speak French ple's behavior, i.e. the actual forms of the language and the ways these and/or English in their daily lives. These languages fit into different were used, from their attitudes, i.e. the way they felt about the language places in the communicative functions of the society, and this complexity is not at all unusual in the various types of speech communities in the and its variability, their evaluations of the variation. Specifically, how do speakers feel about these two varieties, the two registers-the H and the world. In the original article, I should have recognized and acknowledged L? In many diglossic situations, for example, people will say that the L that diglossia can be, and often is, part of a larger array of distribution of language uses in a general language situation. It was Stewart who first variety has no structure, no grammar, no rules, and it is only chaos. This view is quite widespread though not universal in cases of diglossia, and called my attention to this larger picture. He invented a system of nota- is also found in other language situations with stigmatized varieties (cf. tions for functions of language and developed a way of including diglos- discussions of Deshpande 1991 and Errington 1991). The details of such sia in the larger situation (Stewart 1968). attitudes and the extent of their prevalence in the community are phenom- Similar anchorings or lodgings of diglossia in larger situations occur in ena that sociolinguists are obliged to look for and describe. In all four many parts of the world. Often what is superposed is a national language cases outlined in the 1959 article, aspects of this attitude toward the L va- or former colonial language, or some other language of wider communica- tion. This situation seems to constitute a distinct subtype of diglossia in rieties appear; such parallels are probably not just coincidental, but reflect a larger picture, which should also have its principles and its reasons for principles of human organization and interaction. being and for changing. A number of authors have explored embedded In one important respect the community's attitudes were decisive in my diglossias of this general type (e.g. Platt 1977), and several of the papers conceptualization of the diglossia situation. In every one of the four cases the researcher can document a continuum of forms between the H and L in the Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1 (1991) make a point of lo- cating diglossia in a larger picture (e.g. Spolsky's). varieties, and some linguists have denied the validity of my identification It is also worth elaborating a little more than was done in the original of the diglossia situation on this account. I recognized the existence of in- termediate forms and mentioned them briefly in the article, but I felt then article that the H variety may be shared with other communities when the L varieties are not, and the L varieties may be shared across communities and still feel that in the diglossia case the analyst finds two poles in terms of which the intermediate varieties can be described; there is no when the H is not. For example, Arabic exists in central Asia, so-called Bukhara Arabic left over from some soldiers who were there centuries third pole. Also the users of the language in a diglossia situation typi- ago. They lost touch with the H variety: they speak a kind of Arabic rec- cally deal with it attitudinally as a two-term relation and use metalinguis- ognizable as northern Iraqi Arabic but with no Classical Arabic attached tic labels that refer to the two poles and 'mixed' or varieties. to it. A more extreme example is Maltese, historically a variety of North This is not to deny that other language situations may be quite different, African Arabic, which has long since done away with Classical Arabic. that a diglossia may change into another situation, or that in some cases a What was the L variety is written in a roman alphabet orthography, and strong 'metapragmatic' judgment of the speech community, in the judg- Italian and English serve some of the H functions that Modern Standard ment of the sociolinguist, simply may be wrong. Also, it does not deny Arabic serves in the Arabic world. the importance of studying the structure, use, and attitudes toward inter- The fact of a shared H variety can be very significant in accounting for mediate varieties (which I have encouraged and supported; cf. Ferguson language attitudes and changes in linguistic structure over time. For ex- 1964). In another situation, the creole continuum, the study of</p><p>60 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 61 varieties, as they have come to be called, has proved to be of great theoretical interest (Rickford 1974). of the phenomenon by reference to some kind of power relationship or 'oppression' that is involved. This feature must then certainly be consid- Although the four defining cases I selected agreed in many features of ered. language attitudes, they also differed in particular respects. For example, One way of looking at this feature is to consider that in some speech in Greece people approved of dialect poetry, i.e. poetry in one of the L va- communities, choice of the H or L variety can be used in the same way rieties, and such poetry was published much more freely than correspond- that the choice of pronouns of address is used in other communities. For ing types of poetry in the Arab world. Language attitudes often become example, let's assume an idealized case in which everyone knows both va- politicized, and this is certainly the case with diglossias, but the politi- rieties. Then there could be times when it would be appropriate for speak- cization may take different forms. In Greece the use of L varieties in ers to use either L or H to each other, depending on the formality of the newspapers and political speeches came to have a liberal or left wing fla- situation or the uses of written or spoken language. But also, there could vor, including communist doctrine, whereas in the Arab world left wing be times when it would be appropriate for one person to use the H variety groups, including communists, favored the H variety, arguing that every- and for the addressee to use the L variety to mark power relationships. one should have equal access to it. In Switzerland, speakers are quite proud of the local dialects and of hav- This point was made by Stewart in 1963 and is alluded to in several pa- ing 'invented' them. They even have a very limited place for them in pers in the Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1 (1991). school, and publish a certain amount of poetry and historical novels in It is of particular interest when similar ways of coping with power dif- ferential in the use of diglossic varieties arise in unrelated instances of various L varieties, making use of an agreed-on system for local dialect transcription, all of which is unthinkable in the Arab world. diglossia. A fine example appears in Deshpande (1991). The authors of The matter of attitudes must raise the question of which comes first, the Sanskrit plays were faced with the question of how to be loyal to their language variety or the feelings toward the variety? How did the attitude literary tradition and yet portray realistic dialogue. They chose to have the kings and priests speak in the H variety and the people of lower status get set in place? How did the variation get set in place? As attitudes change, what kind of changes, if any, can we expect in the patterns of ac- speak in L varieties, although of course in real life everyone spoke in one or another L variety and used H only for religious, literary, and official tual language use? Though language structure and language attitudes are documents and certain public occasions. In the early twentieth century an certainly tangled together in the web of language use, it is worth trying to Arab playwright (Mikhail Nu'aimeh) facing the same problem chose the sort them out, since they can change separately or together and presum- same solution. He had the educated people speak H and the less educated ably, at least in some cases, there are causal relationships going in one di- rection or the other. people speak L, although in real life everyone spoke L in the situations presented in his dramas. 3.6. Power People have also pointed out that it is important to look at the social institutions that the H variety. How does the H variety get codi- In the 1959 paper no direct mention was made of class differences, power fied? How does it get transmitted, valorized? These are important ques- differentials, or social conflict. At the time I wrote and in the kind of tions, and one should look for the institutional bases of codification writing I was producing, claims of 'objectivity' in an attempt to be closer transmission, and valorization. When linguists or sociolinguists do this, to 'true science' prevailed, and linguists were not accustomed to pointing they find that in some communities there are strikingly similar factors- out the linguistic correlates of power differentials in communities. Never- for example, certain traditional formal instruction comes at certain periods theless, even with a goal of objectivity or maintaining a distance from lo- of life in which the H variety is transmitted. There are other diglossic sit- cal biases and certain things should have been mentioned in uations in which the H variety has to be simply picked up in specific con- the 1959 article that were not. For example, how widespread is compe- texts that are not highly formalized. These are important institutional fac- tence in the H variety and which social groups have greater access to it? tors that contribute to our understanding of sources and outcomes as well The proportion of the community competent in the H variety and the so- as the dynamics of the language use. cial position of the H-competent group make a big difference in terms of access to power. This issue raises a whole set of questions with respect to 3.7. Interactional dynamics the power and solidarity factors of the two registers. Many who now write Most descriptions of register variation, including my own, are static de- about diglossia, especially French sociolinguists, begin their discussions scriptions that fail to examine the phenomena of register switching and the negotiation of meanings by register variation within a social interac-</p><p>62 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 63 tion. Register variation is, after all, part of the repertory of communica- 4. Future Research tive resources that members of a speech community may use for many Many kinds of productive research on speech communities are possible purposes. Study of such phenomena as the communicative strategies used that will investigate the relations between linguistic structure, language by interactants in conversation as they draw on the resources of register use, and language attitudes on the one hand and phenomena of social or- variation will not only illumine the processes of social interaction but ganization and communicative functions on the other. I have, however, will also deepen our understanding of the processes of conventionalization some favorites. One is the case study, in spite of my dissatisfaction with of register and the change of register systems over time. Holes (1991) is a many such studies. The papers in the Southwest Journal of Linguistics fine example of interactional analysis in a diglossic situation even though 10/1 (1991) are all case studies, and each one is informative and thought- the discourse analyzed is a monologue: Holes analyzed the register provoking. As case study literature accumulates, however, the demands switching in a set of political speeches where it was possible to identify on the authors become heavier. For one thing it is increasingly desirable differing communicative strategies for different segments of the speeches. to write each case study with an eye to comparative treatment. It is frus- Caton's fascinating paper (1991) also shows detail of diglossic interac- trating to read a stimulating case study and find that it lacks information tion, in his case where segments of the speech community differ in their on what the reader regards as some crucial points. This is, of course, the conception of the register variation itself. We could even learn much sim- same problem syntacticians have who write about some theoretical crux in ply from recordings of actual conversations that move from formal to in- one language and look to descriptions of other languages for comparable formal and back again. The 1959 paper should have at least alluded to evidence only to discover that the relevant facts are simply not available. this kind of analysis, and I could have offered at least a few examples of What I have in mind is not so much a well developed theoretical frame of some forms of register switching that I had observed. reference as something as simple as a checklist of points to be covered, a checklist that an author could compile for himself or herself on the basis 3.8 of reading a few other case studies or theoretical discussions. These seven points of weakness by no means exhaust the self-criticism I A demand of a different kind is presented by the luxuriant growth of could offer, but they give some indication of ways the original paper publications on particular languages and language situations. The litera- could have been improved and might in turn have done a better job of ture on the four defining speech communities alone has become immense stimulating related studies. In addition to the seven, which are typical of and puts a burden on any responsible author who wants to contribute an- considerations that could have been taken into account on the basis of my other case study of one of them. And the same phenomenon is occurring outlook and experience at the time, there are others that could not have in a number of cases. occurred to me until much later. One is the question of the relation of A second favorite of mine, and one that is rarely produced, is the cross- diglossia to such explicit, formal theories of language as came into exis- community study of a particular phenomenon. To take the old diglossia tence later. Paolillo 1991 is an example of an attempt to connect data article as a starting point, I would find it particularly instructive if schol- from a diglossic situation to claims of syntactic theory. Another is the ars would take one or another of the nine features identified there (or some question of diachronic change in an H variety. The Slavic linguistic other feature implicit or barely suggested there) and examine it across a scholarship that Comrie (1991) draws on is familiar with the regional and number of widely different instances of diglossia in the narrow sense that temporal variation in Old Church Slavic, but language change in a non- I defined there. For example, it would be useful to know the extent to vernacular variety is hardly admitted in the field of study of changes in which the H variety is used for formal spoken purposes. In some cases it progress. Robert Mathiesen coined the term languages' for such is widely used; for example, until a few years ago, anyone who made an H varieties as Old Church Slavic and first made me think about the pro- after-dinner speech in Greek had to use katharevousa, but with the ex- cesses of language change in non-mother-tongue varieties. It is now be- tended functions of demotiki, that has now changed, though the feelings coming clear from the work of Belnap (cf. Belnap 1990) that the patterns that such a talk be given in the H variety linger. However, in of grammatical agreement in Arabic have followed different paths of di- Telugu, which has a kind of diglossic situation, the H variety is never achronic change in Classical/Modern Standard and in the dialects. This used that way. People write articles, and especially poetry, in it, but it is phenomenon opens up a whole field of linguistic research at the same never used in speaking on formal occasions. It turns out that this particu- time that it contradicts some views of language change. But it is time to lar feature may have contributed to the political achievements of one move on to a general consideration of future diglossia research. group over another in the state of Andra Pradesh in India. The issue arose</p><p>64 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 65 there of what form of Telugu should be used for modern school texts Caton, S. C. 1991. "Diglossia in North Yemen: A Case of Competing when Telugu was replacing English. All the writers agreed that the liter- Linguistic Communities." Southwest Journal of Linguistics ary language must be used, but some linguists argued that spoken stan- 10/1:143-59. dard L variety should be used, since no one was accustomed to speaking Chambers, J. K., and P. Trudgill. 1980. Dialectology. Cambridge: Cam- the literary language in instructional settings. After much contention, the bridge University Press. linguists won out there, partly because there was no active tradition of us- Deshpande, M. M. 1991. "Conceptions of Diglossia in the Writings of ing the H variety extensively in formal speech. Thus looking at one such the Sanskrit Grammarians." Southwest Journal of Linguistics feature across a hundred or speech communities would help us charac- terize diglossia situations and the alternative ways they may change. Errington, J. 1991. "A Muddle for the Model: Diglossia and the Case A final favorite of mine is the kind of study that follows a given situa- of Javanese." Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1:189-213. tion diachronically for a relatively long period of time or during a period Ferguson, C. A. 1959. "Diglossia." Word 15:325-40. of rapid social and linguistic change. In many cases there is insufficient (ed.). 1964. Contributions to Arabic Linguistics. Cambridge: evidence to reconstruct the history in any detail, but in several dozen Harvard University Press. cases it is possible to chart some of the crucial changes over time, and re- 1978. "Multilingualism as Object of Linguistic Description." search of this kind becomes automatically a contribution also to the Linguistics in the Seventies: Directions and Prospects, ed. by B. whole question of language standardization, and, more generally, the Kachru. Urbana: Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois. mysterious processes of conventionalization in human language (cf. Fer- 1983. "Sports Announcer Talk: Syntactic Aspects of Register guson 1988, Scaglione 1984). Variation." Language in Society 12:153-72. The term 'diglossia' has come to mean many different things and the 1988. "Language Standardization as a Form of Language original conceptualization had a number of weaknesses, so that I can Spread." Language Spread and Language Policy: Issues, Implications, imagine a time when the term itself may be abandoned in favor of more and Case Studies, ed. by Peter H. Lowenberg. (Georgetown Univer- precise and principled terminology, but so long as it continues to stimu- sity Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1987.) Washington, late papers of the quality represented in the Southwest Journal of Linguis- D.C.: Georgetown University Press. tics 10/1 (1991) it is serving at least part of its original purpose, and if it Ferguson, C. A., and J. J. Gumperz (eds.). 1960. "Linguistic Diversity in helps in some way to move us toward a more general theory of language South Asia: Studies in Regional, Social and Functional Variation." in society, I will feel amply rewarded. (Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, Publication 13.) International Journal of American Lin- guistics 26/3 pt. 3. References Fishman, J. A. 1967. Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia; Diglos- Ammon, U. 1989. "Toward a Descriptive Framework for the Sta- sia With and Without Bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues 23/2:29- tus/Function (Social Position) of a Language within a Country." Sta- 38. tus and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, ed. by U. (ed.). 1968. Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Ammon. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Mouton. Andres, F. "Language Situations in Multilingual Switzerland." Gumperz, J. J. 1968. "Types of Linguistic Communities." Readings in Multilingua 9:11-45. the Sociology of Language, ed. by J. A. Fishman. The Hague: Mou- Belnap, K. 1990. "Variable Agreement with Non-human Controllers in ton. Classical and Modern Standard Arabic." Paper presented at the Fourth Holes, C. 1991. "The Uses of Variation: A Study of the Political Dis- Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Wayne State University, course of Gamal Abdunnasir." Paper presented at the Fifth Annual March 1990. To appear in Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics 4. Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, University of Michigan, March Berger, M. 1990. "Diglossia within a General Theoretical Perspective: 1991. To appear in Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics 5. Charles Ferguson's Concept 30 Years Later." Multilingua Holm, J. A. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles, vol. 1: Theory and Structure. Britto, F. 1986. Diglossia: A Study of the Theory with Application to Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tamil. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Hudson, A. (Forthcoming.) "Diglossia: A Bibliographic Review." Lan- guage in Society.</p><p>66 Charles A. Ferguson DIGLOSSIA REVISITED 67 Hudson, R. A. 1980. Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press. 1 A comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography, especially thorough for works in Khubchandani, L. M. 1989. "Diglossia and Functional Heterogeneity." English, making no attempt to cover, for example, works in Arabic on Arabic Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, ed. by U. diglossia, will soon be available (Hudson, forthcoming). Ammon. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 2 Oral presentations on diglossia revisited have included ones in Sydney, Sin- Kloss, H. 1976. "Uber Deutsche Sprache 4:313-23. gapore, Stanford, and Charlottesville, among others; none of these was ever Kremnitz, G. 1987. "Diglossie: Possibilités et limites d'un terme." put in written form. The present paper is most like the most recent one Lengas 22:199-213. (Charlottesville), which was tape recorded. Krishnamurti, Bh. (ed.). 1986. South Asian Languages: Structure, Con- 3 Two recent articles offer fairly detailed characterizations of the total language situation in Switzerland: Andres 1990 and Pap 1990. vergence and Diglossia. Delhi: Motilal Labov, W. 1968. "The Reflection of Social Processes in Linguistic Struc- tures." Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. by J. A. Fishman. The Hague: Mouton. 1989. "Exact Description of the Speech Community: Short a in Philadelphia." Language Change and Variation, ed. by R. W. Fasold and D. Schiffrin. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nikol'skij, L. B. 1976. Sinxronnaja sociolingvistika. Moscow. Pap, L. 1990. "The Language Situation in Switzerland: An Updated Sur- Lingua 80:109-48. Platt, J. T. 1977. "A Model for Polyglossia and Multilingualism (With Special Reference to Singapore and Malaysia)." Language in Society 6:361-78. Reid, T. B. W. 1956. "Linguistics, Structuralism and Philology." Archivum Linguisticum 8:28-37. Rickford, J. R. 1974. "The Insights of the Mesolect." Pidgins and Cre- oles: Current Trends and Prospects, ed. by D. DeCamp and I. F. Han- cock. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Scaglione, A. (ed.). 1984. The Emergence of National Languages. Longo Editore. Schiffman, H. F. 1991. "Swiss-German Diglossia." Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1:173-188. Spolsky, B. 1991. "Diglossia in Hebrew in the Late Second Temple Pe- riod." Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1:85-104. Stewart, W. A. 1968. "A Sociolinguistic Typology for Describing Na- tional Multilingualism." Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. by J. A. Fishman. The Hague: Mouton. Wexler, P. 1971. "Diglossia, Language Standardization, and Purism: Pa- rameters for a Typology of Literary Languages." Lingua 27:330- Notes * This paper first appeared in Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10/1(1991):214- 34, and is reproduced here by permission of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest.</p>