The Peculiarities Of Societal Bilingualism

Societal bilingualism can be accounted to movement of people and to movement of national borders, but there are also other reasons that lead to bilingual societies such as exogamous marriages and expansion, colonization and conquest. For example in the British Isles, speakers of Welsh, Scotish, Gaelic Irish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish became bilingual under pressure from England (Sebba, 2010). When we talk about the movement of national borders this not only implies expansion but also a division of territories that leads to people who were once members of a linguistic majority becoming the minority. We can take the people of Corsica, who today live in the French state but their language is closer to that of Italian than to French.

Next we have movement of people, which includes migration for different reasons, but today mainly migration for economic reasons. Also it can be internal or that to other countries. This leads to linguistic minority groups of different sizes that are usually self-sufficient, and to the changes within the country that the same exist. For example the influx of Polish speakers from 2004 in the United Kingdom and Ireland led to the expansion of Polish culture in these countries and left a trace in the existing situation (Sebba, 2010).

We can say that societal bilingualism has its origins in aforementioned types of movements which affect and shape the linguistic reality of the world.

Measuring Societal Bilingualism

One has to be aware when measuring societal bilingualism about the ways the data is collected and the implications of an ideological aspect which can be included. That is why there are two types of problems with it: “those related to the complexity of the language itself and those related to the attitudes of speakers and other social actors such as government” (Sebba, 2010).

We can take official language surveys as an example where we would find that not every country requires knowing the same information. Belgium for example does not share the information of how many people speak French in Wallon and Flemish regions; the US is only interested in the proficiency of the English language rather than the other language that a person could and does speak at home. On the other hand the language survey of Canada requires information about all possible languages that a person could speak or once spoke. So this is a good indication that information can be guided and even manipulated by the government.

Also there could be a potential problem with surveys for academic purposes. According to Sebba (2010) the problem with these surveys is “a tendency to essentialism and reification of languages”. This is why we have to approach the collected data that exists and will exist with having all of this in mind.

Diglossia

The term diglossia was introduced by Charles Ferguson (as cited in Sebba, 2010, 450) originally referring to “bilingualism or bidialectalism, where a particular speech community used two related language varieties for different purposes”. Both varieties are seen as the same language, only their use differs, H or the “high” is used for formal uses, while L or the “low” is used for informal purposes, in other words when one is appropriate the other is not. Ferguson explained diglossia on four languages he called “defining cases”: Arabic, French in Haiti, Greek and German in Switzerland. Each language had an H and L variety; they only differed in historical relationships between H and L, the context of use and extent to which the L variety was acknowledged as existing. Regardless of the fact that the L variety is seen as the spoken language in all four cases they developed orthography.

Joshua Fishman (as cited in Sebba, 2010, 450) extended Fergusons concept of diglossia, to one where H and L do not have to be varieties of the same language, as long as they were being used for different functions. He also introduced the concept of diglossia with or without bilingualism and bilingualism with or without diglossia. An example of bilingualism with diglossia would be the case in Paraguay where we have a bilingual country, in Spanish (H) and Guarani (L), but there still exists a difference in function and prestige. A case of diglossia without bilingualism would be where the H variety is restricted to the elite, which is not that common today; today we would have elite bilingualism, which is the case in Rwanda where the elite speaks French and Kinyarwanda while the poor only speak Kinyarwanda. Bilingualism without diglossia would be the case of a society using two languages without any differences in use and function. A similar situation can be seen in Canada where French and English are co-official languages, but only in province New Brunswick. Also there is an attempt in Spain to get the regional languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician to equal status to that of Spanish with language planning.

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Here we also introduce the concept of the “domain” which is crucial for the diglossic view of bilingualism, referring to the context in which a language is used. Regardless of the fact that there are some problems with this concept, such as the fact that more languages could be used for the same domain as in the case of code-switching, it has still remained as an important one for the study of societal bilingualism and also in the understanding of language shift and maintenance. (Sebba, 2010, 452) An interesting fact about diglossia is the fact that there exist cases of triglossia, double-overlapping diglossia and even linear polyglossia.

The Stability of Diglossia

There are different opinions regarding the stability of diglossia and bilingualism. Ferguson saw it as a stable condition of a longer duration but which can disappear due to certain social changes, still an obvious examples that prove this to be wrong was the diglossic situation in Greece where Demotic was a L language and Katherevousa the H language and they swapped places. According to Sebba (2010) “diglossic relationship between languages or language varieties are subject to change”. On the other hand we have Fishman (as cited in Sebba, 2010, 450) who believed communities with bilingualism but without diglossia as being unstable, because of the “leaky” diglossia.

Critiques of the Diglossia Theory

Ferguson’s diglossia theory, as previously mentioned, deals with two varieties of one language, called L and H variants, which are actually seen as variant registers rather than dialects. On the other hand Fishman extended this concept to various bilingual cases and also stylistic registers and dialects, with this pointing to the fact that H and L are sociolectal variations. The diglossia theory proposed by Ferguson and later extended by Fishman is mainly critiqued for not including power relations and the actual origin of the diglossia. A “conflict tradition” concept was introduced which dealt with the underlying reasons of one language dominating the other such as social class, political, economic and power relations (Sebba, 2010; citing Martin-Jones,1989: 118). Linguists also coined the term “neutralization” for the reversal of this phenomenon. Also others addressed this issue, for example Devonish’s notion (as cited in Sebba, 2010, 453) of “Conquest diglossia” made as a result of colonization, also a power relation problem.

Societal bilingualism and the economic metaphor

Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of language as “symbolic capital”, meaning that every language is perceived in a certain context (state, country, institution, city, etc.) as more valuable than another by the standards of a dominant group which performs “symbolic domination” and order. This “symbolic domination” is accepted by the marginalized language users and the dominant language is more valuable by “imposing the criteria of appreciation” and therefore used more (Sebba, 2010; citing Heller, 2005: 6). Due to globalization languages can become an advantage to specific groups, for example migrant women coming from countries having tradition of English as a second language have an advantage to employment with families wanting English-speaking workers.

Language shift and language maintenance

These two concepts leave their trace on the linguistic situation of a community. Language shift can lead to language endangerment or language death if it involves entire communities or minority language groups that shift to the majority language. A study conducted by Li Wei (as cited in Sebba, 2010) confirmed that social networks are important for language shift; Chinese older women which were recent immigrants were shown to use Chinese more likely than the younger population born in Britain which prefers English, and those who had more opportunities to talk to native speakers became more proficient while those that did not, talked more in their own language. Language maintenance is seen as depending on the strength of the Chinese social network; the stronger it is the more Chinese is used. For a language shift to happen we have to have a bilingual surrounding, and there are a few factors that can speed it up; economic factors, strength of the social network, but also others that have a connection with the person’s individuality and perception.

The concept “ethno-linguistic vitality” was introduced by Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (as cited in Sebba, 2010) as a means of determining the chance of language shift and language maintenance. It is based on three factors: status, demography and institutional support. But this approach was also criticized due to ignoring power relations.

Recent developments in research on societal bilingualism

Recent developments include: linguistic ethnography, bilingualism on the Internet, urban bilingualism studies, and linguistic landscapes.

Linguistic ethnography is based on the interrelation of language and social life as influencing each other. International sociolinguistics, the new literacy studies and critical discourse analysis are one of the studies within this paradigm that have contributed to the field of societal bilingualism. Next we have bilingualism on the Internet, which is increasing due to the increase in the communication via different media which lead to new types of multilingualism, but this is still an unexplored territory though it could be a lucrative one regarding societal bilingualism. Then, urban bilingualism studies place their focus on urban communities and “the sense of “neighbourhoods” –and the histories, narratives, practices and networks which construct them as distinctive multilingual linguistic spaces” (Sebba, 2010). And lastly, the linguistic landscapes approach developed within “ethno-linguistic vitality” which includes language used in signage as a measure of how people use their language (Sebba, 2010). The problem with this approach is the fact that not all languages are used for signage, and it is also used as a manipulation device so this is a clear indicator that it cannot represent the real usage of a certain language.