We owe the overt recognition that speakers make such allocations to two major sociolinguists, Charles Ferguson and Joshua Fishman. It may seem obvious to us now, but up until their writings, few linguists or ordinary people paid any systematic attention to where and when bilinguals used the languages they spoke. The implication was that there wasn’t anything systematic about bilin-gual language use. We now know that’s not so.
In a now classic article published in 1959, Ferguson introduced the notion of diglossia to English-language readers. He used this term to characterize a community with two genetically related varieties of the same language, but with their use rather strictly allocated to different situations. This means that in such communities, it would be unthinkable to use the same variety for all types of interactions.
Writing at about the same time, Fishman (1965; 1972) showed how one can discuss any bilingual community systematically in terms of domains; that is, speakers divide up when they use their languages in terms of the “major activity centers” in their lives. Also, Fishman (1967; 1970) introduced the notion that diglossia could be extended to societies with two genetically un-related languages.
Diglossia and domain analysis are introduced here because they bring in the notion of allocation. The allocation that speakers make for their two or more languages in different domains is an important clue as to whether an L1 will be maintained or not. Still, note that neither diglossia nor domain analysis is a theoretical model. They both offer descriptions of where, when, by whom, to whom, and for what purpose one language variety rather than another is used.
But they differ from the three models discussed in the previous sections as explanations of susceptibility to shift. We referred to those models as theoretical because they offer explanations. Descriptions are necessary because they help us arrive at proposed explanations, but on their own they are not explanations.
4.4.1 Domains
Part of our communicative competence is recognizing (probably unconsciously) that most members of our community do not speak the same way in all of their daily interactions. Fishman uses the term domain in order to generalize bey-ond just referring to individual social situations and how language use varies from one situation to the next. Thus, he popularized the term domain to cover a like set of social situations. But domains are more than simply situations; as Fishman notes, they represent clusters of certain values, too.
Particular language use often identifies a domain. Fishman points out, “The very fact that a baseball conversation ‘belongs’ to one speech variety and an electrical engineering lecture ‘belongs’ to another speech variety is a major key to an even more generalized description of sociolinguistic variation” (1972: 43).
What our sense that these two speech events require a different way of speak-ing tells us, accordspeak-ing to Fishman, is that we view speech events as fallspeak-ing under different domains. The major domains that Fishman identified are fam-ily, friendship, religion, education, and employment.
In a given domain, the idea is not that every interaction is identical, but rather that the majority of interactions in domain X are the same at some level.
They are the same in the sense that there is a usual (or unmarked, a term we’ll use again in chapter 6) combination of elements in interactions in each domain.
Each domain has its own constellation of expected factors, such as location, topic, and participants. So, for example, under the domain of “education”, an expected interaction would include a teacher and students as participants, school as the location, and how to write a composition or solve a mathematics problem as the topic.
4.4.1.1 Evidence of domain-specific codes
The reason all of this is relevant to our study of bilingualism is, as Fishman goes on to explain, that each domain in a bilingual community is “commonly associated with a particular variety of language” (1972: 44). Fishman and his associates demonstrated this in a study of in-migrants from Puerto Rico (Spanish speakers) in the New York City community (Fishman, Cooper, and Ma, 1971). The authors conducted several experiments and surveys that showed that speaking Spanish was primarily associated with the domain of family and secondarily the domains of friendship and religion. Spanish was associated least with the domains of education and employment. The reverse was true for the domains associated with English. When choices didn’t match these domains, the differences had more to do with participant differences than with topic or place (p. 251).
We will see more support for the concept of domains later in this chapter when we look at the language use in the home or at work as evidence of the extent to which an L1 is being maintained. Here, we cite some evidence that language use in bilingual communities does vary according to domain. The domain easiest to characterize is often the home domain where we can predict that the L1 of the speakers typically will dominate. But where multilingualism prevails, we can also predict that other languages may be used, too.
For example, a study of language choice in multilingual Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, showed that most people speak their L1 with family members at home, but not exclusively. In about half of the 352 households studied, speakers also use the two main lingua francas of Lusaka, Nyanja and English. The researcher (Siachitema, 1991: 480) described language use in Lusaka in this way: “It is normal for people to hold a conversation in the mother tongue on one topic and change to English or Nyanja on another”, with the use of Eng-lish or not depending largely on level of education.
A survey of language use in Luxembourg, one of the most multilingual countries in Europe, gives us a look at another domain, the workplace (Fehlen, 2002). Luxembourg is a small country, but it is unusual in having three official languages. One is Letzeburgesch, a Germanic variety that is the mother tongue of 85% of the respondents in a large survey (N=2002). The other official lan-guages are French and German.
Of the three, French dominates in the domain of work. According to Fehlen’s survey, it also is looked upon as the language of prestige. French is the lan-guage that most respondents said they could speak, and the lanlan-guage they said they used most frequently at work. Over 70% of the sample think it’s necessary to be able to speak French in Luxembourg and 81% even think it’s necessary to write it. Once a language is established for a particular domain, it tends to retain momentum there. So it’s no surprise that French is the main language of communication between Luxembourgers and foreigners at work, too. This is the case even though many foreigners say they can speak
Letzeburgesch (69% of the Germans and even 57% of the Italians say this).
There are many foreign workers in Luxembourg, some as immigrants, but many as daily commuters who come across the borders from Germany and France.
4.4.1.2 Self-reports and validity
Most studies about language use in different situations, such as the ones just mentioned, are based on self-reports; that is, speakers tell researchers what they speak. But speakers themselves are notoriously bad at paying attention to their own language use. And, for various other reasons, such as wishing to please the researcher or to appear more educated, speakers sometimes give answers that aren’t accurate. But we don’t want to castigate the researchers who do such surveys because there isn’t a real alternative to self-report sur-veys if the goal is to get comparable answers across large groups of speakers (to the same questions about language use). Still, keep in mind that the results may not be entirely valid.
4.4.1.3 Other factors can override domain as a predictor
Of course, other factors can override the domain itself in influencing choice of a language. The most obvious factor is who the participants are, including what language varieties they are able to speak well. We’ve already noted that most subjects in a study of Lusaka, Zambia reported speaking their mother tongue at home. But we see a difference if socio-economic status is taken into account. Speakers living in the highest-cost area of Lusaka reported a con-siderable use of English in spouse to spouse conversations at home when the topic was the work domain (39% (24/62) said they spoke English on this topic). In comparison, speakers in the lowest-cost area reported no English at all when talking about their work (0/105) (Siachitema, 1991).
4.4.1.3.1 Topic
The effect of topic also seems to interact with that of socio-economic status in the Lusaka study. When subjects in the highest-cost area of Lusaka were asked what they spoke with a spouse when talking about the “strange behaviour of neighbours”, 45% said they used their mother tongue and only 18% used English. Subjects in the lowest-cost area, who probably had fewer choices in their repertoire, reported they used their mother tongue between 61% and 63% of the time, no matter what the topic.
4.4.1.3.2 Negotiating interactional positions
Who the addressee is also can tip the scales toward one language or the other.
Consider results from Elena, a child who is being raised as a English-German bilingual and who was studied between the ages of two and three (Bouchereau Bauer, Hall and Kruth, 2002). Even at this young age, in play activities Elena
spoke the language of her adult playmate (English or German) most of the time. Other studies of young bilingual children show that they, too, select their language according to the language of their play partner. Interestingly, Elena did switch to English at times when playing with a German partner. Elena was being raised in the United States and she was already aware that English, not German, was the language of the dominant society there and therefore carried more authority in the local community. Thus, the authors explain this switch, not as an inability to keep speaking German, but as “a conscious, strategic use of language to maintain her authority as leader” (p. 69). This interpretation fits in with our general view that choices have social motivations much of the time. You’ll see more on this view in chapter 6.
4.4.1.3.3 Times change, a domain’s language changes
Of course, no bilingual situation is entirely stable and when a shift is in progress, it’s hard to find entirely uniform language use in any given domain. In their study conducted in the 1970s (mentioned above), Fishman and his associates found that Spanish was clearly the main language spoken in the home domain by their New York City subjects. About twenty years later, Zentella (1997) studied one block (with a number of high rise apartment buildings) in what’s known as El Barrio in the Bronx (New York City) and found diverse patterns of language use, even in the home. Everyone except for one Anglo male was Puerto Rican, but no single pattern of language use dominated. Zentella found six different patterns of bilingual usage in the 20 homes she studied. In every case, the children spoke both English and Spanish to each other and some-times to their caregivers, but whether the caregivers spoke Spanish to them or not varied (some spoke English or both English and Spanish).
4.4.2 Diglossia
In its original formulation and that used by Ferguson, the term “diglossia”
applies only to closely related varieties used in the same society. Two features define this type of diglossia that we will call classic diglossia. First, everyone has the same L1 and acquires it in a home environment. But not everyone knows the second variety also in existence there; if they learn it at all, they learn it in school. Second, the two varieties are not used in the same situations.
Allocation looks like this: If variety X is used in situation (or domain) A, then variety Y will not be used there. As we’ve already seen in earlier discussions, such generalizations are too strong in their absolute form. But this “if one, not the other” allocation generally does hold, at least in some domains, even in the small set of communities that Ferguson listed (discussed below).
Ferguson’s major contribution was his insight that we can make gener-alizations about such communities and language use in terms of clusters of very different interactions – if they have a common feature. For Ferguson, the
common feature was the degree of formality that the community attached to a type of interaction. Since Ferguson’s study, clusters of interactions in any community are often referred to as either High (H) or low (L). These terms imply levels of formality, but also the related concept of out-group or in-group activ-ity. The idea is that interactions that have society-wide prestige fall under the H rubric and those associated with in-group solidarity fall under the L rubric.
The examples that Ferguson gives in his original study show such an alloca-tion. The H variety is the one that is used for more formal purposes, such as writing respected literary works, religious texts, and prepared public speeches.
The L variety is used mainly for everyday conversation, especially within the family. The best example of classic diglossia is the allocation of varieties in the Arabic-speaking world. Classical Arabic is the H variety and the various regional varieties of Arabic are the L varieties. (However, today Modern Standard Arabic is also recognized as a modern version of Classical Arabic for use outside of religious purposes, and therefore it also can be called an H variety. More on this below.)
Here is where the notions of domain and diglossia intersect: In a given domain, most interactions are expected to display a specific set of values.
Behavior in such interactions, including language choices, reflects these values. And diglossia is about dividing up language choices in terms of values. As already indicated, the idea of diglossia is primarily important, not so much for itself, but for this insight. That is, this notion has prompted later writers about bilingualism to see how the notion of complementary alloca-tion (i.e. each variety is allocated to its own domains, but this is based on how it is valued) holds in communities in general.
4.4.2.1 Another view of diglossia
Soon Fishman (1972) extended the notion of diglossia so that it can apply to any bilingual community. We will call this extension extended diglossia. An obvious difference between classic and extended diglossia has to do with the relationship of the language varieties in question. Under classic diglossia, two varieties of the same language are involved. They can be called dialects because they are at least somewhat mutually intelligible, but they are definitely different from each other. Under extended diglossia, the H and the L varieties are re-cognized as different languages (they are not mutually intelligible).
Extending the notion of diglossia made clearer that the situations in which the H variety (in either version of diglossia) is used are not just ones calling for more formality, but are those where status and prestige are salient. In fact, we will call them status-raising situations. This aspect of diglossia is dis-cussed further below. Thus, higher education, public speeches, most business meetings, serious written texts, news broadcasts and the like are carried out in the H variety. The L variety is what is often spoken in situations where status in the out-group world is not salient. Thus, it is used in casual
conversations with the family and close friends, as well as for service encoun-ters, such as shopping.
4.4.2.2 Diglossia as a continuum
Many observers have pointed out that diglossia is often a continuum, meaning that you can’t draw firm lines around situations and say that variety X is the only one used there. Also, observers have said that strictness of allocation varies a great deal from society to society.
In many societies that show extended diglossia, we would have to speak of triglossia or something like that; that is, there isn’t a true bipartite division.
Either a third language can figure in the allocation, or else different dialects or styles (formal to informal) of the same language can be part of the equation along with another language. For example, in various parts of East Africa, there is a three-way division between a language clearly identified with one ethnic group (the L variety) and English as a lingua franca in status-raising interactions (the H variety), and then Swahili as a general lingua franca and therefore something in between L and H. Or, in French Canada, there is a division between standard Canadian French and an urban dialect of French called Joual, with English for contacts with anglophone Canada and many international purposes.
Or, codeswitching between the H and L varieties can occur in any domain (cf. Myers-Scotton, 1986). Even though university lectures in the Middle East are in the H variety (Modern Standard Arabic, not Classical Arabic), lecturers may codeswitch to the local dialect (the L variety) to clarify what they just said in the H variety. This same type of codeswitching occurs in many classrooms around the world when the medium of instruction is an international lan-guage (the H variety). The instructor switches to the L1 of the students (the L variety) to make sure they understand a point.
How flexible people are about the notion of a continuum depends some-what on some-what Schiffman (1993) calls the “linguistic culture” of the society in question. He refers to the linguistic culture as “a shorthand for referring to the set of behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, and historical circumstances asso-ciated with a particular language” (p. 120). Schiffman’s insight is that this
“linguistic culture” makes a difference in how people actually value their varieties and divide up their use. When diglossia is viewed in terms of the linguistic culture, it becomes very clear that diglossia’s existence and strict-ness is really a feature of the society in question, not the languages involved.
For example, in those Arabic-speaking societies where the use of Classical Arabic is absolutely required for certain religious purposes, such a require-ment is part of the linguistic culture, not a feature of Arabic itself. Similarly, it is part of the linguistic culture in the German-speaking cantons in Switzerland to expect all persons born in those cantons to be able to speak Swiss German (the L variety).
4.4.2.3 Classic diglossia
Ferguson identifies only four speech communities and their languages that he considered as diglossic: classical and colloquial Arabic, standard German and Swiss German (in Switzerland), French and Haitian Creole (in Haiti), and two varieties of modern Greek (in Greece). Others have pointed out other diglossic communities, notably the communities of Tamil speakers in India and in other places such as Sri Lanka (Schiffman, 1993).
Researchers agree that a classic diglossic situation still exists in two of the four examples Ferguson cited. The concept no longer applies in Greece, where the Demotic variety (the former L variety) is now in general use and a 1976 language reform established it as the language of publication administra-tion, law, and education. In Haiti, Haitian researchers question whether diglossia ever existed there and state that it does not now (Dejean, 1993). We discuss briefly here the cases of Swiss German and Haitian Creole, as well as of Arabic.
Researchers agree that a classic diglossic situation still exists in two of the four examples Ferguson cited. The concept no longer applies in Greece, where the Demotic variety (the former L variety) is now in general use and a 1976 language reform established it as the language of publication administra-tion, law, and education. In Haiti, Haitian researchers question whether diglossia ever existed there and state that it does not now (Dejean, 1993). We discuss briefly here the cases of Swiss German and Haitian Creole, as well as of Arabic.