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DIGLOSSIA

recalcitrant when it comes to supporting ‘new economy’ initiatives,
they are also unavailable as consumers for the burgeoning businesses of
e-commerce and newinteractive media entertainment. Further, the
more that information and electronic interactivity move to centre
stage, the more that the digital divide will disenfranchise those not
connected, contributing to what has been termed the ‘democratic
deficit’ in modernising societies.

Further reading: Joseph (2001); Katz (1988); Norris (2001); Wyatt et al. (2000)

DIGLOSSIA

The presence within a speech community of two related, but
contrasting, linguistic varieties – one of which is high status, the
other lowstatus – which are used in complementary contexts. Thus
the high variety will most likely be used for news broadcasts, religious
services, newspaper editorials and traditional poetry, whereas the low
variety will be used for everyday conversation, sports commentary,
soap opera and other informal contexts. Clear examples of diglossia are
to be found in the Arabic-speaking world. In most, if not all, Arab
countries two varieties of Arabic exist side by side – Colloquial Arabic
learnt informally at home as the first language, and Classical Arabic
acquired by explicit instruction at school. The grammar, pronuncia-
tion and some of the vocabulary of the two forms of Arabic are
different. The language of the Qur’a ¯n – the sacred text of Islam – is in
Classical Arabic; and partly for this reason the high variety is fairly
uniform throughout the Arabic-speaking world, despite strong
regional variations in the local variety of Colloquial Arabic. Indeed,
the availability throughout the Arab world of Classical Arabic helps to
guarantee a degree of mutual intelligibility when speakers of quite
divergent forms of Colloquial Arabic meet. Other diglossic situations
may be found in Greece (between Classical Greek and Demotic
Greek) and in Switzerland (between High German and Swiss
German). While English-speaking communities do not seem to
display such strong internal division into two contrasting varieties, it is
still possible to recognise a cline or scale of competing varieties which
are accorded differing degrees of prestige.