Language choice in multilingual communities

Language choice in multilingual communities

1. Domains

   • Domains of language use: A typical interaction between typical participants in a typical setting.
   • The five domains of language use
     • family
     • friendship
     • education
     • employment
     • religion

2. Affect of social dimensions

   • 1-The social distance scale. 2-The social status scale. 3-The dimension of formality is important in selecting appropriate code. 4-The function or the goal of interaction

3. Diglossia

   • A term used in a narrow sense and a broad sense
   • its features In the narrow sense::
     • 1- two distinct varieties of the same language used in one community (H,L). 2- each variety is used for distinct functions. 3- no one uses the H variety in everyday conversation. In its broad, it focuses on feature 2 only.

4. Diglossia and Bilingualism

   • 1- Diglossia is a characteristic of speech communities rather than individuals. It is societal or institutionalized bilingualism. 2- Individuals may be bilinguals. 3-The broader sense of diglossia focuses more on the second feature

5. Polyglossia

   • t is a term used for situations where a community regularly uses more than two distinct codes for distinct purposes in distinguishable situations
   • example: people of kalala in Bukavu