Webography

Online articles

List of research citations on the subject of diglossia. The website presents diverse perspectives and views on ways of conceiving the definition of the phenomenon in question.

In this academic paper, Alan Hudson comments on Ferguson's theory of diglossia, and also develops the concept further, giving a new approach to the subject.

This very interesting article by Coby Lubliner presents a revision of the term "diglossia", emphasizing the limits of Ferguson's description and also developing the concept, with a distinction between what he called "strong" and "weak" diglossia.

Harold F. Schiffman revisits and interprets different theories on diglossia, from the original theory by Ferguson to the extended version by Fishman.

Papers for download

The bibliography following the body of this paper contains a total of 1,092 entries on the subject of diglossia. Entries dealing with diglossia in the classical sense of Ferguson (1959) and in the sense of functional compartmentalization of distinct languages are represented approximately equally. Scholarly publication in the area of diglossia continues unabated as indicated by the fact that approximately one-half of the entries in the bibliography were published between I983 and 1992. However, there remains a need for a comprehensive integration, comparative analysis, and socioevolutionary interpretation of diglossia research.

This paper is an attempt to document the functions of English vis-a-vis Indian mother tongues in respect to a sample of educated Indian bilinguals. It is based on a sample survey conducted in the twin cities of Ifyderabad and Secunderabad. The main objective of the survey was to discover the societal functions of the subjects' mother tongue and English.

A major sociolinguistic and educational problem that faces the Arabic-speaking countries is the diglossic situation in the language. This issue, a sensitive one for religious and national reasons, has not received enough objective attention and a solution is still being awaited. Muhammad Raji Zughoul first discuss diglossia and Arabic dialects, puts the problem in historical perspective, and then presents the results of a panel discussion of the issue that was arranged by the author with ten graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ferguson's concept of diglossia is examined with a view to dedetermining its applicability to creole continua. The characteristics of classic instances of diglossia are subdivided into sociocultural and linguistic features, and these in turn are used as a basis for determining the extent to which different types of community might be fruitfully described as diglossic. The conclusion is drawn that creole continua share far more in common with Ferguson's defining cases of diglossia than they do not, and far more than other types of speech community.


In the first part of the article, an approach to Greek diglossia is proposed, focusing on the differing social functions of the two coexisting Greek languages. The language reform of 1976, which formally abolished diglossia, came at the end of a long process of devaluation of the official "pure" language. Yet, in recent years, a metalinguistic prophecy of language decline has received widespread acceptance. The second half of the article examines the reasons for its success and the resulting revival of the argumentation questioning Demotic Greek, and concludes that they should be attributed to a crisis of national identity.