Diglossia Research Paper

I focus in this essay on the case of Arabic, the area of my fieldwork expertise. Although Arabic diglossia is similar to that of other diglossic speech communities, there are some noteworthy differences. Ferguson (Elgibali 1996, p. 63) points out that, until recently, an after-dinner speech in Greek would have had to be given in katharevousa (H), but nowadays, demotiki (L) is acceptable. However, in south India, the Telugu community would never use H that way, and Ferguson further elucidates: ‘People write articles, and especially poetry, in it, but it is never used in speaking on formal occasions’ (Hymes 1964).

Over the past few years, the notion of the continuum has proven useful in attempts to redefine diglossia as it relates to triglossia, tetraglossia, and multiglossia or polyglossia (Kaye 1994). This latter perspective represents the current linguistic scene, particularly as it applies to the world’s most complicated, in my opinion, diglossic situation, viz., Arabic (see, e.g., Kaye 1994 and Hary 1996). As illustrative, consider that ‘what do you want (m. sg.)’ is maa( aa) turiid in Modern Standard Arabic (hereafter MSA, a modern version of Classical Arabic), whereas an Egyptian would say in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) for the very same thing Gaawiz or Gaayiz eeh, a Sudanese daayir sinu, and a Lebanese su baddak. Diglossia can, however, border on bidialectalism, perhaps even on bilingualism, depending on the situation, since some native speakers of Arabic would be hard-pressed to understand a radio or TV news broadcast in MSA, let alone comprehend the oral rendition of an essay on a modern technological or literary theme. Native oral and written knowledge of and fluency in MSA are entirely different matters, however, which need not concern us here (see Parkinson 1991, 1993). Of course, it is important to recognize that an Arab deprived of an education will have far less knowledge of MSA than a university graduate.

Let us now consider an English parallel (although it is a rough one only) to the classical diglossia of Ferguson 1959. English has a formal style or register: ‘To whom do you wish to speak?’ corresponds to its informal equivalent ‘Who do you want to talk to?’ Further, one may also compare the triglossic verbs wed—get married or marry—get hitched, the diglossic verbs ‘put out’ (say, a cigarette) vs. extinguish, and the different nuances conveyed by the nouns kids vs. children vs. offspring vs. progeny (see Kaye 1991 for details). English even has a difference in H and L prepositional usage. Consider upon vs. on, as in ‘Upon arrival, go directly to the baggage claim area.’ Further down the continuum ladder in the mesolect, one may utter: ‘On arrival …,’ or ‘On arriving … .’ If one were uttering this sentence to a friend (toward the basilect), though, it would come out something like, ‘When you get there, go straight to get (or pick up) your luggage.’ It is the different vocabulary items in particular which instantaneously mark a speaker as using the H ‘classical standard,’ or the L ‘colloquial vernacular patois.’ A particularly good example of this phenomenon is MSA ahaba ‘to go’ vs. the very widespread vernacular raaq or masa misi. It is the utilization of the former which would be interpreted by a native speaker as a symbol of H, whereas the use of the latter would be indicative of L.

Let us now turn to the intricate phenomenon of register mixing switching variation. First of all, even Ferguson himself admits that he failed to examine this topic in the 1959 paper (Elgibali 1996, p. 61). It would be considered very odd to mix registers in the wrong fashion, although all sorts of register-dialect mixing regularly occur throughout the Arab world. Thus, maa( aa) Zaawiz (MSA ‘what’ ECA ‘want’) would be perceived as most awkward—in fact, downright bizarre. It simply does not and would not occur. By a similar token, speaking MSA to one’s maid at home or bargaining over the price of an item in a crowded market in MSA would be absurd, even ludicrous (unless one was trying to be facetious, weird, or sarcastic; however, non-Arabs can and often do use MSA in these and related situations, and can get away with it). This violates the ‘normal’ functional constraints on when and how to mix MSA and a colloquial dialect. On the other hand, ECA da ma biyustaxdams ‘this is not used’ is perfectly acceptable, with its MSA imperfect internal passive plus the ECA -s ‘negative.’ The aforementioned examples bolster the viewpoint that native speakers possess an overall ‘communicative competence’ rather than a mere ‘grammatical competence.’

Before taking up the details concerning the function, acquisition, grammar, and phonology of MSA and colloquial Arabic dialects, let me state that a phenomenal number of works on diglossia stemming from Ferguson (1959) have been published. In fact, one might wonder if any other sociolinguistic topic has generated such a prodigious research effort over the same 40-year time span. There is one book-length Bibliography: (Fernandez 1993), and another monographic compilation appeared at about the same time in the leading sociolinguistic journal (Hudson 1992). Much of this prolific scrutiny has centered around investigating diglossia in other speech communities. Indeed, we possess studies of diglossia in Bengali, Sinhalese, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Old Russian, Ottoman Turkish, Irish, and Welsh, to mention but a few languages. Some researchers, such as Joshua A, Fishman, have even deemed a very specialized case of bilingualism to be diglossia. He affirms that the H and L varieties in Paraguay are Spanish and Guaranı respectively (Fishman 1971, p. 75, originally formulated in Fishman 1968). Furthermore, Fishman (1971, p. 74) has also claimed that the use of any two varieties of a language in different situations constitutes diglossia. We may refer to this as ‘extended’ diglossia which, in essence, leads to labeling all speech communities diglossic. At the very heart of the term is really the matter of degree, which is why the notion of the continuum is so useful in the analysis being presented in this essay. Diglossia in Arabic is a different phenomenon from diglossia in English—quantitatively more than qualitatively—especially when one notes the extreme, all-encompassing pervasiveness of the Arabic H-L dichotomy vs. the limited extent of formal vs. informal English stylistic variation. With this in mind, it appears safe to assert that diglossia is holding steady or is on the increase in the Englishspeaking realm, but declining in Arab countries such as Egypt, where ECA is becoming increasingly more acceptable in written form (e.g., in advertisements) and in some formal oral situations, such as certain political or religious contexts (e.g., the speeches of Abdul Nasser or the Koranic commentary by Sheikh Shagrawi). Egypt is the most populous Arab country, and the one which has the greatest tendency to use its dialect for cultural identification and nationalistic purposes in situations bordering on the unthinkable in other Arab states.

It is important to keep in mind that diglossia was slow to evolve. In the case of Arabic, Blau (1977, p. 190) is of the opinion that diglossia is not pre-Islamic, but began as the Arab armies spread out of Arabia conquering foreign lands such as Egypt in 640 AD. This is a controversial view not shared by all Arabists. Be that as it may, the Koran was instrumental in preserving the classical language in a frozen state, while its contemporary spoken dialects continued to change, like all living languages. It is generally agreed that the most classical (read: ‘most elegant’ or ‘best’ variety of H) Arabic today is, as has always been the case, the language of the Koran.

1. Function

Ferguson (1959) noted that H is apropos for sermons, all sorts of letters, speeches, university lectures, news broadcasts, and poetry, whereas L is appropriate when talking to servants, waiters, clerks, and workmen, conversing with family, colleagues, and friends, and in soap operas, captions on political cartoons, and folk literature. Thus, it is inconceivable that a husband would tell his wife that he loved her using anything other than L. In a similar vein, a parent scolding a child (or two children conversing) would use L. However, a professor giving a lecture would be using MSA, although there might be some L interspersed (especially in Egypt).

2. Acquisition

Modern linguistics distinguishes between language acquisition and language learning. Thus, it is axiomatic that native languages are acquired, whereas superposed varieties (and foreign languages taught to adults in schools) are formally learned. Every Arab grows up speaking his her native dialect, and is formally taught MSA, given the opportunity. No one speaks MSA as his or her mother tongue. Exposure to MSA has been on the increase throughout the Arab world in the twentieth century, although a few peripheral Arabic-speaking communities have had little or no exposure to it, thus preventing the development of diglossia.

3. Grammar

One of the major characteristics of H is a more involved grammar. Ferguson (Hymes 1964, p. 435) calls H ‘grammatically more complex.’ Basically, MSA may be viewed as a marked system, and colloquial Arabic as unmarked (see Kaye 1972 for details). That is to say, MSA marks many more categories of grammar: nominative, genitive, and accusative cases, duality in the pronoun, verb, and adjective, and so on. No Arabic dialect has retained these grammatical categories, which have been lost over time.

Let us now consider a simple sentence: ‘I saw the man going to his house.’

MSA: ra aytu rrajula ’aahiban ilaa baytih.

ECA: suft’irraagil raayiq beetu.

In addition to the different lexemes for ‘see’ and ‘go,’ MSA marks the noun ‘man’ with -a ‘accusative masculine singular,’ also observable in the accusative -an in the following active participle. Moreover, the preposition ’ilaa, absent in ECA, governs the genitive case of the following noun, which would, in its nonpausal form, be baytihi (the form baytih is pausal, since it occurs in final position, i.e., before pause).

4. Phonology

It is well known that the MSA voiceless uvular plosive corresponds to a glottal stop in ECA, Syro-Palestinian dialects, etc. (Kaye and Rosenhouse 1997 for the details of cross-dialectical comparisons). However, a native knows that alqur’aan ‘Koran’ is to be pronounced only with q . Ferguson correctly concluded that the L phonology is thus the basic system (Hymes 1964, p. 435). Thus, it is of great importance to realize that MSA pronunciation is not uniform throughout the Arab world. This is one of the reasons for my claiming that MSA is ill-defined, while ECA and all colloquials are well-defined (Kaye 1972). The most important factor determining MSA phonetics is the nature of the L underlying input (assuming a solid background of schooling in the language). Thus, ECA speakers, such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, pronounce the letter jiim as giim (a voiced velar stop for the voiced palato-alveolar affricate) because this is the ECA reflex of the jiim. There are ECA stress patterns which are carried over to MSA as used in Egypt; e.g., tajannabataa ‘they (f.) both avoided’ (Mitchell 1990, p. 103). As Mitchell succinctly points out: ‘Vernacular influenced’ is nowhere more clearly in evidence than in the matter of accentuation’ (Mitchell 1990).

5. Conclusion

Kaye (1972) concluded that MSA is, to a large extent, unpredictable, and thus ill-defined. There are so many varying microscopic details, since MSA is used in so many different countries by so many people with so many different educational backgrounds. Hary (1996, p. 84) refers to this state of affairs when he affirms: ‘In the middle (between H and L: ASK), the mesolect, one finds almost countless variation, or lects, used by native speakers, on different occasions and under various circumstances.’

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