Bilingualism, Multilingualism, and

Diglossia
1. Hesti Nur Wulan
2. Fina Damayanti
3. Amara
Table of content
• What are Bilingualism and bilingual?
• Type of Bilingualism
• Degree, Function, Alternation, Interference of
Bilingualism
• What are Multilingualism and multilingual?
• What is Diglossia?
• What are Diglossia Settings?
• Some Strategies to Cope With Diglosia Settings
What are Bilingualism and Bilingual?
• Bilingualism is the ability to communicate in two
different languages.

• Bilingual that someone is fluent in two languages.

Type of Bilingualism
1.
Early Bilingualism

Simultaneous Successive

Refers to child who has

Refers to a child who learns already partically acquired a
two languages at the same first language and then
time, from birth. learns a second language
early in childhood
Type of Bilingualism
2. Late Bilingualism
Refers to bilingualism when the second language is
learned after the age of 6 or 7; especially when it is
learned in adolesence or adulthood.
Type of Bilingualism
3. Additive bilingualism and subtractive bilingualism
 Additive : refers to the situation where a person has
acquired the two languages in a balanced manner.
 Subtractive : refers to situation where a person learns
the second language to the detriment of the first
language, especially if the first language is a minority
language.
Type of Bilingualism
4. Passive Bilingualism
Refers to being able to understand a second language
without being able to speak it.
Degree, Function, Alternation, Interference of Bilingualism
• Degree refers to how much knowledge of other
language
• Function refers to range of functions such as topics
and styles the person masters in the other language(s).
• Alternation refers to the person's ability to alternate
between the languages
• Interference refers to what extent the stronger
language of the ytwo interferes with the weaker
 What are Multilingualism and Multilingual?

Multilingualism is the ability of an individual speaker

or a community of speakers to communicate effectively
in three or more languages.

A multilingual person is one who can communicate in

more than one language, be it actively (through
speaking, writing or signing) or passively (through
listening, reading or perceiving)
The term s bilingual and trilingual are
used to describe comparable situations in
which two or three languages are
involved.
A multilingual person is generally
referred to as a polyglot

Poly (Greek) means ‘’many’’

Glot (Greek) means ‘’language’’

Multilingual speakers have acquired and
maintained at least one language during
childhood, first language

The first language (the mother tongue) is

acquired even without formal education
Types of Multilingualism
Additive
 Learning of second language does not interfere
With first language
 English speakers in QUEBEC often learn
French to upgrade business skills
Substractive
 Learning of second language does interfere
(replace) with first language
 Successive US immigrant generations
eventually become monolingual English
speakers
According to Ferguson, there are several features that
characterize diglossia. They are as follows:
1. Function: H is the formal language that is used in specific types
of situations and writings, such as in formal lectures, newspapers,
political speeches..etc. while L is used for daily conversations
including calls, messages ..etc.
2. Prestige: The speakers of the language concerned regard H as
superior to L in a number of respects, e.g. H is considered more
educated, more sophisticated, more logical, better able to express
important thoughts.
3. Literary heritage: All the literature is written in H variety.
Despite the fact that some poems, stories, novels, etc. are written
in L variety in most communities concerned with diglossia, they
are considered not to be a pure literature compared to those written
in H and taught at schools or universities.
4. Acquisition: L is the language of home; therefore, it is acquired
first . Later, at a certain age, the child learns the H variety at
school.
5. Standardization: H is standardized because its grammars ,
dictionaries, etc. are written by native grammarians,
6. Grammar: The grammar of H variety is more complex than that of L
variety . In H variety , the sentence must be grammatically and
semantically correct, while in the L variety much attention is to the
semantic issue ,
7. Stability: The diglossic situation in a given language is relatively
stable. It can persist for several centuries, and in some cases seems to
last well over a thousand years (Ferguson 1996). However, in the case
of Arabic language is not fully stable because both H and L variety of it
change by time.
8. Lexicon: The lexicon of both H and L varieties is somehow different
though it is generally shared, e.g. in Saudi dialects the word "do" is
referred to as "sawait" while in MSA it is " fa'alt".
9. Phonology: Both H and L varieties share the same phonological
elements , but H has more complicated morphophonemics, e.g. MSA
has the diacritics that are not used in dialects " baabon " in MSA and "
baab" in dialects.
 Varieties of Diglossia

Diglossia has two types of variety –

I. High variety
II. Low variety
Diglossia

High low

Formal informal

Official professional Friendly, slang, vulgar

 Functions of Diglossia

Church and mosque

newspaper editorial high political speeches

University lectures

Giving Instruction to Waiters, Servants and Clerks

Personal letters low Radio Soap Operas

Captions on Political Cartoons and folk literature

What is Diglossia?
Diglossia is a situation in which two distinct varieties
of a language are spoken within the same speech
community.
Bilingual diglossia is type of diglossia in which one
language variety is used for writing and another for
speech.
What are Diglossia Settings?
Diglossia setting which is based on the culture of the
archipelago especially Madura.
Madurese people very familiar with diglosia settings
.This is not strange considering the Madurese language
that they use in their daily lives has variations in the
level of speech or the level of language in the language
Madura is called Ondhagan Bhasa. The level of speech
contained in Madura is divided into three the levels are:
(1) Enja’-Iyah, (2) Enggi-Enten, and (3) Enggi Bunten
16 digglosia settings based on the perspective of 100 students in Madura
The 16 settings are as follows:
(1) given the mandate to be the MC
(2) visiting neighbors
(3) meet new people known
(4) being in an official seminar forum
(5) giving a speech to the audience
(6) talk to the cleric or cleric
(8) is outside Madura
(9) carry out the presentation in front class
(10) talk to more people old
(11) meet with Madurese who fluent fine language
(12) conducting a formal meeting
(13) entered the speech contest
(14) talk with officials(7) speaking among Madurese
(15) talking with Madurese culture
(16) talk to young children.
 Some Strategies to Cope with Diglossia
Settings
When facing various kinds of diglosia settings, Madura
students have their own strategies that they show in
dealing with these settings. There are 13 the settings and
their strategies analyzed in this section include: