Historicizing diaglossia
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Auer (2005, 2011) presents a typology of present‐day dialect/standard constellations in Europe, thereby reintroducing the concept of diaglossia, which refers to a situation with intermediate variants between dialect and standard. Characterizing the sociolinguistic landscape in many languages in Europe today, diaglossia is assumed to be a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, following a previous stage of diglossia. Drawing on a range of case studies of post‐Medieval English, German and Dutch, this article argues that the sociolinguistic situation in the Early and Late Modern period cannot be described in terms of diglossia, and is characterized by a ubiquity of intermediate variants instead, that is, by diaglossia. This means that diaglossia should be extended much farther back in time and is not a recent development following a state of diglossia.
Source: Journal of Sociolinguistics
DOI: 10.1111/josl.12165
Author: Gijsbert Rutten
Institution: Leiden University
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4237154972