The Present Position and Viability of Minority Languages

Abstract

The term ‘minority language’, as used in this chapter, denotes a language that is not merely spoken by only a minority of the population of a particular political unit but is in some way inferior in status to some other language or languages. In this connection, we shall make frequent use of the term ‘diglossia’, which was first given wide currency in an article by Charles A. Ferguson (1959).¹ For Ferguson, the term relates to communities in which ‘two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions’, each variety ‘having a definite role to play’. One of these varieties fulfils the functions of a superposed or H (‘high’) variety. It is ‘learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation’. The L (‘low’) variety is used in everyday conversation and other relatively informal contexts. The concept of diglossia has since been extended to include situations in which H and L are not varieties of the same language and in which H is the normal spoken medium of at least a section of the community;² this is the sense in which the term will be used here. One can usefully distinguish between diglossia and societal bilingualism, which occurs when two varieties fulfil approximately equivalent functions within a community, regardless of whether or not a substantial proportion of individuals are themselves bilingual.