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4. Language Rights. Diglossia_Theory

The document discusses language rights in the context of multilingualism and diglossia, emphasizing the ethical considerations of language preservation and the rights of speakers to maintain their languages. It explains diglossia as a societal situation where two languages serve different social functions, highlighting the power dynamics involved. Additionally, it covers the concepts of pidgin and creole languages, detailing their development, characteristics, and the sociolinguistic implications of language contact and change.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
2 views5 pages

4. Language Rights. Diglossia_Theory

The document discusses language rights in the context of multilingualism and diglossia, emphasizing the ethical considerations of language preservation and the rights of speakers to maintain their languages. It explains diglossia as a societal situation where two languages serve different social functions, highlighting the power dynamics involved. Additionally, it covers the concepts of pidgin and creole languages, detailing their development, characteristics, and the sociolinguistic implications of language contact and change.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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4. Language Rights in the Context of Multilingualism. Diglossia.

4.1. Language Rights


The issue of language rights provides an opportunity to attempt to view language contact and
conflict ethically rather than scientifically.
A. A favoured approach by some linguists is the right of a language, like any other endangered species,
to survive. As each language incorporates some unique features derived from the rich and varied
experience of human beings, language loss is regarded as seriously as the loss of an animal or bird
species. Anthropological linguists have worked to preserve as much of a language as possible while
there is still one speaker alive (in grammar textbooks, dictionaries, collections of texts). Every support
is provided to the speakers of a language in their efforts at reversing language shift.
B. Another approach is focusing on the rights of the speakers of the language to use it and their rights
to maintain it by teaching it to their children. To the extent that a state recognises the rights of its
citizens to access to work, health care, housing, education, justice, democracy, so it must take care to
deal with the potential lessening or blocking of these rights for those who do not speak, read or write
the official language. One way to recognise this right is by providing adequate instruction in the
official language to all who do not control it (not just children, but new immigrants, temporary foreign
workers). Another way is by providing interpreting and translating services to those who have not yet
learned the official language.
Therefore, the first language right is the right to learn the official language, and in the meantime,
to be assisted in dealing with those situations where lack of control of it leads to serious handicaps.
A second right is not to be discriminated against in access to work, education, justice or health
service on the basis of being identified as a member of a group speaking another language. This right is
part of a larger right not to be discriminated against on the basis of group membership, religion, gender,
ethnic group etc.
A third right concerns the right of a group of speakers of a language to preserve and maintain
their own favoured language or variety, and to work to reverse any language shift to the status or prestige
variety. Here, a potential conflict between the rights of individuals and groups might appear. A group may
wish to preserve its language, but individual members may prefer to shift to the dominant language.

4.2. Diglossia
The clearest example of language choice according to domain is diglossia, a situation in which
two or more languages (or varieties of the same language) in a speech community are allocated to different
social functions and contexts. When Latin was the language of education and religious services in
England, for example, English and Latin were in a diglossic relationship.
In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often) closely-related
languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one
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of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be
the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in
a changed form.
The term diglossie (French) was first coined (as a translation of Greek diglossía 'bilingualism') by
the Greek linguist and eroticist Ioannis Psycharis. In Charles Ferguson's article "Diglossia" in the journal
Word (1959), diglossia was described as a kind of bilingualism in a given society, in which one of the
languages is (H), i.e. has high prestige, and another of the languages is (L), i.e. has low prestige. In
Ferguson's definition, (H) and (L) are always closely related. (H) is usually the written language whereas
(L) is the spoken language. In formal situations, (H) is used; in informal situations, (L) is used. Ferguson
cites the following examples of a diglossic situation: classical Arabic (H) and colloquial Arabic (L),
standard German (H) and Swiss German (L) in Switzerland, standard French (H) and Haitian Creole (L).
Ferguson states that one of the most important features of diglossia is the specialization of function for
(H) and (L). In some situations only (H) variety is appropriate and in others only (L) variety. On the
example of Arabic, he shows that the H variety is used in church and mosque sermons, political speeches,
university lectures, news broadcasts, newspaper editorials, while the L variety is used to give instructions
to waiters, servants and clerks, in personal letters, in conversations with friends and family members, in
soap operas, in folk literature. The relationship between H and L can be summarised as follows:
1. There is a specialization of function for H and L.
2. H has a higher level of prestige than L, and is considered superior.
3. There is a literary heritage in H, but not in L.
4. There are different circumstances of acquisition; children learn L at home, and H in school.
5. The H variety is standardized, with a tradition of grammatical study and established norms and
orthography.
6. The grammar of the H variety is more complex, more highly inflected.
7. H and L varieties share the bulk of their vocabularies, but there is some complementary
distribution of terms.
8. The phonology of H and L is a single complex system.
The differences in use suppose differences in form. The grammar of L variety is generally simpler.
There are also major differences in the vocabulary of the two varieties. One of the major differences is in
the prestige of the two varieties. The H language is associated generally with a body of important literature
and carries with it the prestige of a great tradition or religion. It is more stable being protected from change
by written texts and by an educational system. It is also used over a wider region and thus can serve some
unifying purpose. The L varieties are more localized and show dialectal variation and the tendency to
change of unwritten dialects.
Diglossia thus refers to a society that has divided up its domains into two distinct groups, using
linguistic differences to mark the boundaries and offering two clear identities to the members of the
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community. It is important to note the political situations in which diglossia often occurs, with the H
language associated with power. Educational pressure is normally in the direction of the H variety, and
those who cannot master it are usually socially marginalised.
It is essential to mark the difference between code switching and diglossia here. Diglossia occurs
across domain boundaries, and code switching occurs within domains. In diglossic situations, people can
be quite aware that they have switched from H to L variety or vice versa, whereas code switching is quite
unconscious.
4.3. Pidgin and Creole
Pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out
of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues.
Pidgins develop as a means of communication between people who do not have a common language.
They have reduced grammatical structures and restricted vocabulary, serving as auxiliary contact
languages. They are improvised rather than learned natively. The appearance of a pidgin is marked by the
fact that it is not a native language of anyone, but is learned only in contact situations by people who
normally continue to speak their own language inside their own community. A pidgin is a social rather
than individual solution. Each speaker makes his own mistakes and compromises. A pidgin involves the
mixture of two or more languages. Sometimes the grammatical system is based more or less on one
language and the vocabulary is largely taken from another. In all cases, grammar is simplified. The
creation of a pidgin usually requires: prolonged, regular contact between the different language
communities; a need to communicate between them; an absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency
in) a widespread, accessible inter-language.
Several reasons for the development of pidgin languages may be mentioned; however, all of them
are related to history. In the nineteenth century, when slaves from Africa were brought over to North
America to work on the plantations, they were separated from the people of their community and mixed
with people of various other communities, therefore they were unable to communicate with each other.
The strategy behind this was that because of lack of communications they could not conspire to escape
back to their land. Therefore, in order to finally communicate with their peers on the plantations, and with
their bosses, they needed to form a language in which they could communicate.
Pidgins also arose because of colonization. Prominent languages such as French, Spanish,
Portuguese, English, and Dutch were the languages of the colonizers. They travelled, and set up ports in
coastal towns where shipping and trading routes were accessible.
There is always a dominant language which contributes most of the vocabulary of the pidgin; this
is called the superstrate language. This is the language of a later invading people that is imposed on an
indigenous population and contributes features to their language. The other minority languages that
contribute to the pidgin are called the substrate languages. Speakers of the substrate will use some version
of the superstrate, at least in more formal contexts. The substrate may survive as a second language for
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informal conversation. As demonstrated by the fate of many replaced European languages (such as
Etruscan, Breton, and Venetian), the influence of the substrate on the official speech is often limited to
pronunciation and a modest number of loanwords. The substrate might even disappear altogether without
leaving any trace.
In many social circumstances, pidgins have become quite stable over time. Spoken only as second
languages and functioning in limited domains as languages of wider communication, they are learned
informally in contact and used especially as trade languages. In multilingual areas, where each of the
existing language group maintains its distinctiveness, the pidgin continues to develop. This occurs as a
result of intermarriage of a couple whose native languages are different, but who both speak pidgin. The
pidgin is spoken at home and learned by children as a first or mother tongue. In terms of contemporary
linguistics, this leads to some fundamental changes. Children acquiring the language do so in the same
way that children acquire any other language. New features emerge. It is no longer just a contact language
with limited social functions, but is called to deal with an increasingly wide range of social needs. The
process is called creolisation, as the language develops having greater phonological and grammatical
complexity. At this stage, the language is no longer a pidgin, as it has acquired the full complexity of a
human language, and becomes a Creole. Thus, a Creole is a language descended from a pidgin that has
become the native language of a group of people. The majority of Creole languages are based on English,
Portuguese, French, Spanish and other languages
Often creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of the
current community (such as Krio in Sierra Leone and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea). However, pidgins
do not always become creoles—they can die out or become obsolete.
Pidgin English was the name given to a Chinese-English-Portuguese pidgin used for commerce
in Canton during the 18th and 19th centuries. In Canton, this contact language was called Canton English.
It was also referred to as chinglish ("Chinese English") or engrish ("English Chinese").
The most well-known pidgin used in America is the now creolized Hawaiian Pidgin where locals
mixed the traditional dialect of Hawaiian with English, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages.
One controversy in sociolinguistics has been over the origin of the variety of English associated
with the speech of Afro-Americans. For many years, it was assumed to be a non-standard social dialect
similar to and based on the Southern regional dialects of American English, and reflecting the social
isolation and inadequate education of the former slaves. Some linguists pointed to certain features, such
as the absence of the verb to be in the present tense, or different rules of verb agreement, or the use of
double negatives, as evidence of linguistic inferiority and justification for discrimination against the
speakers of this variety. But these features are common in standard languages (Russian – the absence of
the verb to be in the present, French negatives are usually double). This fact supports a theory that Black
English derives from an original Creole and argues for its status as a separate language and its recognition
and maintenance.
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Because of their lack of formal recognition, pidgins and creoles are often treated just as a local
varieties and linguistic aberration.
4.4. Lingua Franca
Lingua franca was originally a common language consisting of Italian mixed with French,
Spanish, Greek, and Arabic that was formerly spoken in Mediterranean ports. It is a pidgin, a trade
language used by numerous language communities to communicate with others whose language they did
not speak. It can, in fact, be considered the mother of all pidgins, seemingly in use since the Middle Ages
and surviving until the nineteenth century, when it disappeared with hardly a trace. Like other pidgins, it
had a limited vocabulary and a sharply circumscribed grammar, and lacked those things, such as verb
tenses and case endings, that add specificity to human speech.
In modern interpretation, a lingua franca is any language that is used as a means of communication
by groups who do not themselves normally speak that language; for example, English is a lingua franca
used by Japanese doing business in Finland, or by Swedes in Saudi Arabia. Many of the world’s lingua
francas are pidgin or trade languages; for example, Bazaar Hindi (Hindustani), Bazaar Malay, and Neo-
Melanesian (also known as Tok Pisin), which became the official language of Papua New Guinea.
The original lingua franca was a tongue actually called Lingua Franca (or Sabir) that was employed
for commerce in the Mediterranean area during the Middle Ages. Now extinct, it had Italian as its base
with a mixture of words from Spanish, French, Greek, and Arabic. The designation “Lingua Franca”
[language of the Franks] came about because the Arabs in the medieval period used to refer to Western
Europeans in general as “Franks.” Occasionally the term lingua franca is applied to a fully established
formal language; thus, formerly it was said that French was the lingua franca of diplomacy.

Questions for Discussion


4.1
4.1.1 Describe the language rights.
4.1.2 Determine the rights of the speakers as regards their language.
4.1.3 Suggest some real measures of observing language rights in your country.

4.2
4.2.1. Describe the situation of diglossia in a society.
4.2.2 a) Analyse the differences in use and form of the two languages from the same speech community
according to Ch. Ferguson.
b) Compare the difference between code switching and diglossia.
4.2.3 Evaluate the role of diglossia in a multilingual society.

4.3
4.3.1 a) Outline the main linguistic features of a pidgin. Point out the reasons that lead to the appearance
of a pidgin.
b) Characterise lingua franca as a pidgin.
4.3.2 a) Determine the difference between superstrate language and the substrate languages.
b) Identify the linguistic and extra linguistic factors that lead to creolisation.
4.3.3 Predict the future of Pidgin Englishes.

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