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DIGLOSSIA

Diglossia 

Introduction: 

      Diglossia is a situation in which two  languages  exist in a single community and the use of one or other language is dependent on different conditions. One language is considered the ‘high’ language and the other considered as a ‘low’ language. It is  used by people to classify the main (High)  language and sub (Low) language used by separate communities differently. ‘High’ language is used in the public, formal and learned domain. The ‘Low’ language is spoken in a more popular and  intimate domain. Though it is a broad term that refers to bilingualism and bidialectal speech, bilingual or bidialectal individuals must live in a community where two languages are spoken based on different situations/context.  According to Eckert “Diglossia does not exist if the bilingual individual does not experience diglossia in their own speech habits” . 

Individual Vignette: 

Samra Pervaiz

 Diglossia is a situation in which two languages or dialects are used by the same community. I didn’t know the meaning of this word before, but after reading its definition I came to know that I have experienced diglossia since my childhood. I am from Pakistan. During Britain ruled Pakistani and Indians spoke different languages. Persian was a formal language or high language, and Urdu was spoken by communities and considered a low language. People switch languages depending on the people who they are speaking to.

After getting independence, Urdu language was spoken in cities while Punjabi was a village language. People usually speak Punjabi at home. Urdu is considered a high language and Punjabi is considered a low language. I speak both languages and I switch my dialect depending on who I am speaking too. I have experienced racism because I didn’t switch. it’s been long, I have moved to the United States. I only speak Punjabi at home, so my Urdu is not that good. When I visited Pakistan last year, I faced difficulty in speaking Urdu. So, I started speaking Punjabi in public. People started looking down on me. You are considered illiterate if you speak Punjabi outside.

Mitok 

The country where I grew up is called Nepal. Nepal has very unique geography, Nepal is divided into three regions: mountainous regions, hilly regions and plains. Nepal used to have 123 reported languages and in 2019 six new languages were discovered and now there are 129 reported languages. The main reason for so many languages to exist is because it’s unique geography, there are many hills and mountains which separate many cities and villages. There are clusters of groups which speak similar languages but because of separation of many groups of people, each cluster of groups that speak their own languages. The main(High) language is Nepali and the low languages are a different language spoken by different groups. The high language is used in school, public places or cities, and with other people not from their community. Nepali is the official language and other languages are considered as the language of the nation because the constitution of Nepal states “all languages spoken as the mother tongues in Nepal are the languages of the nation”.

The place where I grew up consists of a cluster of 12 villages and they share the same language but each village has their own accents and dialects. I code-switch From my language and Nepali all the time. When I was little I used to speak Nepali I had my accent which was often mocked by others.  I am more fluent in Nepali than my own mother tongue because I grew up mostly in a city where people do not speak my but speak Nepali and their own language.

Serena

Diglossia is a term that I am exposed to almost everyday. Despite being from a diverse city and growing up in a predominantly black/hispanic neighborhood, the way that I speak English is still seen as anything but good. Though I haven’t witnessed or experienced first-hand the way people discriminate against AAVE, it’s all over the internet and on mainstream media. Today, AAVE is seen as both “Gen Z slang” and “Twitter stan language”, when other non-black people speak it, then AAVE is used because it’s trendy. Once the hype of using it dies down, it no longer is “funny” and becomes “overused” which is still a negative correlation to the dialect, as people are essentially mocking it. The dialect has always been correlated with us as “ghetto”, and many of us have been looked at as less than intelligent for speaking it. This discrimination actively prevents us from attaining good jobs and this judgement has cause us to use “code-switching”. By speaking “proper” we are seen as equals in the eyes of others (others being white people), and we are given access to more opportunities that should have already been available regardless of how we speak. This greatly diminishes the value of our dialect and may lead some to abandon it all together. 

Danielle Gibson

An example of diglossia that I could relate to is from my mother’s dialect and my family history because my family is from the Island of Dominica. It is one of the Caribbean Islands between Martinque and Guadeloupe that was colonized by both the French and the British. In Dominica, English is the official language or the main language that is spoken. It is the only language that is taught in schools, however many other languages are considered low languages and are often spoken among the people more casually. For example, my mother learned Dominican Creole among the villagers and she spoke it with her family sometimes. 

Over generations, less and less people have taught their children Creole because they wanted them to learn the English.  However, many Dominicans are making the effort to keep the Creole dialect alive because it is wrong to consider any language as inferior to another. 

Conclusion:

    Diglossia exists in every country, since different groups in the countries have a couple of different languages. All languages are not treated equally. Some are considered a high language and some considered a low language. There is a hierarchy between high language and low language.There are stereotypes and stigma attached to low language. If one speaks a low language in public one is considered illiterate or not smart enough. Oftentimes because of these prejudices  people from low language communities are forced to speak mostly the high language which often cause one to forget or lose their own mother tongue. This experience is similar to people in Hawaii who speak Pidgin and are forced to speak ‘standard English’ instead of Pidgin.

Summary of “Emotions Have Many Faces: Inuit Lessons.” by Jean L. Briggs

“Emotions Have Many Faces: Inuit Lessons.” by Jean L. Briggs is a personal account of an anthropologist visiting the Arctic to live amongst the Inuit in a remote camp, trying to explore what is different about their culture. Briggs was taken into an Inuit family and quickly learned how distinct their way of life is. Through detailing her experiences living with the family, more specifically trying to make sense of how she became ostracized due to her instinctive behavior, Briggs uncovered the intricacies of Inuit social life in her attempt to become a better member of the Inuit community. Some time into staying at the camp, Briggs felt off, attributing it to homesickness, however Briggs later found out that the feeling was caused by the Inuit people ostracizing her for her inability to adapt to established Inuit social behaviors. Briggs acted in such a way that was seen as unsuitable for the Inuit community; her way of reacting to situations and interacting with the community in general revealed her unawareness of the deeper emotional meanings that Inuit people ascribe to their actions. After discovering the fact that there are crucial differences in how the Inuit people communicate their emotions, Briggs started to look deeper into how meanings of certain words are construed in the Inuktitut language. Through studying conceptual differences between the Inuktitut language and English, Briggs came to the conclusion that there is no universal set of emotion concepts. She describes how the Inuit way of life brings about the creation of words that contain multiple English concepts, as well as creating separate words for a single English concept. For instance, the English concept of “love” is divided into a couple distinct words to express either a positive or a negative connotation of the feeling. The conceptual differences in language are meant to create a hyper awareness of other people’s intentions and emotions behind their words. Briggs mentioned the living conditions of the Inuit and how the remote nature of the camp makes the community highly interdependent, and creates the need for understanding these subtle linguistic cues in order to avoid conflict. The importance of proper communication for the Inuit is seen in the way the Inuit children are taught these concepts from a young age. The children are oftentimes asked difficult questions that force them to think and make decisions based on how the words they hear make them feel. Over time the children start forming associations between feelings and certain words and the scenarios that they were encountered with. The formed connections lead children to develop a deeper understanding of the importance of selecting the proper words to express complex emotions. Through her research Briggs reveals the constructive nature of emotional expression in language; her work is meant to argue against the Western notion of attributing emotions to a negative connotation by showcasing the importance of this expression to the Inuit social life as it helps them communicate subtle unspoken meanings. 

Briggs, JL. (2000). “Emotions Have Many Faces: Inuit Lessons.”Anthropologica 42(2): 157-164.

Summary of ““#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States”

The article “#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States”, written by Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa explores the arthrological perspective on hashtags and social medias and their effects of racial political events that have happened in the past; specifically the horrible incident of Michael Brown. The authors look at how social media spread awareness and information about Browns death, leading to a national uproar and outcry against police brutality. This fast spread of information wouldn’t have been possible without the use of social media, and specifically the use of hashtags.

            The main arguments in this article are the ways in which social media and hashtags are a quick access in order to find information based on a certain event that has taken place. Another argument is that social media has been used as a tool in order to shine light of the marginalization happening to people of color, specifically the African American community.

Evidence that was presented to the reader to support their arguments was the use of the hashtag ‘#Ferguson’ after the murder of Michael Brown. They dissected this hashtag which quickly circulated different social media platforms. They analyzed how beneficial the hashtag was in order to circulate and find information used with the #Ferguson hashtag; which was primarily used to organize protest, learn about the death of Michael Brown, and follow the case as well as a plethora of information relating to the topic. However, it was quickly realized how much of a narrow view you receive since you are mostly seeing people’s perspective from your social community. Also, it was noted, not everyone used the hashtag to talk about the movement, some used the hashtag to state they were just in Ferguson, some used it just to redirect traffic to their account. So instead, it was more difficult finding the pattern of hashtag use, because it was used for multiple different things and not for the general idea of spreading awareness on Brown.

            The evidence the authors used are clear and do support the authors arguments. It was easy to follow the claims and find evidence which were shortly presented after the claims were. The article was written very well and very clearly, also it was described in depth. Not only would the authors say their claims, but they would give background on the information they were using in case the reader was not familiar with ‘hashtag ethnography’.

            The author helps us understand how critical the use of language is over social media. The author points out how biased informal journalism can be across social media and how limited of a view we are exposed to. It is incredibly important to do research, but frankly speaking a lot of millennials and teens do not do background research and instead get their information straight from Twitter or other social media platforms. It was not expected that the authors would point out the ultimate biases which people have when tweeting, this shows how easily it is to spread false or twisted information just with the use of a hashtag. It is surprising that with this information people still are quick to believe anything as long as it is accompanied with the hashtag of their interest.

            This hashtag #Ferguson is related to #BLM or #BlackLivesMatter and even #BlackOutTuesday. With these hashtags there was a national and even international coverage of police brutality and racial discrimination amongst the black community. However, the issue that seemed to be prominent was people used the hashtag with no content, just a black square to show solidarity. This caused a stop in information flow, so it was harder to find information such as protest gatherings with these black squares, but it also pointed out that digital activism is real and very much temporary. It does not call for action and is the easiest way to think you are helping, which the article did mention.

Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States: #Ferguson.” American Ethnologist 42 (1): 4–17.

Summary of “To Give up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture

In “’to Give up on Words’: Silence in Western Apache Culture” by Keith H. Bascco, the author uses various social situations to defend his hypothesis. Through his research, Bascco illustrates that silences in Western Apache culture is directly associated with social situations in which participants perceive their relationships with another to be ambiguous.  He, then, argues that refraining from speech can be seen in other cultures. 

Bascco uses six types of social contexts where silence is often preferred. The first is meeting with strangers. Verbal reticence is often an approach used to examine the stranger from a distance and determine whether or not you would like to establish a friendship. The second situation is courting, where in the initial stages of courtship, the couples are reluctance to speak because of a sense of unfamiliarity. The third social context is children coming home after a long absence from home.  There’s a prolonged period of silences after the reunion because parents are still unsure of how much the child might have changed during their absence. The fourth example that the author provides is when getting cussed out. Those who are getting cursed at refrain from speech because of the awareness that individuals that are enraged are often considered irrational or crazy. Because of the assumption that the enraged person is temporarily crazy and unreasonable, silence is used instead of reasoning with the person.  The fifth situation being with people who are sad. Three explanations for why silence is preferred around someone who is grieving a loss is that speaking requires a large amount of physical effort, verbal communication can seem unnecessary, and intense grief can lead to intense rage. The final example is being with someone for whom they sing. During the singing process, the patient is brought into contact with a supernatural force and it is believed that silence is needed.

Overall, something that was observed in all of the situations that were described is silence is a common approach used during ambitious moments. The author makes this argument to illustrate that just like Indian societies of the American Southwest, Western Apache cultures also experience silence behavior. By quoting Priscilla Mowrer, “who inquired into the situational features of Navajo silence behavior in the vicinity of Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation in east-central Arizona”, Bascco portrayed the similarities between the types of social contexts in which Navajos and western Apaches refrain from speech (227). Sometimes when Westerns analyze other cultures and their interactions with one another, they can view them as inferior and uneducated. I believe Bascco decided to make this argument to illustrate that Western culture also experience moments of silences that aren’t that much different from other cultures. I feel that Bascco provided sufficient evidences that was very clear and supported his hypothesis.  

Summary of “To Give up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture

In “’to Give up on Words’: Silence in Western Apache Culture” by Keith H. Bascco, the author uses various social situations to defend his hypothesis. Through his research, Bascco illustrates that silences in Western Apache culture is directly associated with social situations in which participants perceive their relationships with another to be ambiguous. He, then, argues that refraining from speech can be seen in other cultures.
Bascco uses six types of social contexts where silence is often preferred. The first is meeting with strangers. Verbal reticence is often an approach used to examine the stranger from a distance and determine whether or not you would like to establish a friendship. The second situation is courting, where in the initial stages of courtship, the couples are reluctance to speak because of a sense of unfamiliarity. The third social context is children coming home after a long absence from home. There’s a prolonged period of silences after the reunion because parents are still unsure of how much the child might have changed during their absence. The fourth example that the author provides is when getting cussed out. Those who are getting cursed at refrain from speech because of the awareness that individuals that are enraged are often considered irrational or crazy. Because of the assumption that the enraged person is temporarily crazy and unreasonable, silence is used instead of reasoning with the person. The fifth situation being with people who are sad. Three explanations for why silence is preferred around someone who is grieving a loss is that speaking requires a large amount of physical effort, verbal communication can seem unnecessary, and intense grief can lead to intense rage. The final example is being with someone for whom they sing. During the singing process, the patient is brought into contact with a supernatural force and it is believed that silence is needed.
Overall, something that was observed in all of the situations that were described is silence is a common approach used during ambitious moments. The author makes this argument to illustrate that just like Indian societies of the American Southwest, Western Apache cultures also experience silence behavior. By quoting Priscilla Mowrer, “who inquired into the situational features of Navajo silence behavior in the vicinity of Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation in east-central Arizona”, Bascco portrayed the similarities between the types of social contexts in which Navajos and western Apaches refrain from speech (227). Sometimes when Westerns analyze other cultures and their interactions with one another, they can view them as inferior and uneducated. I believe Bascco decided to make this argument to illustrate that Western culture also experience moments of silences that aren’t that much different from other cultures. I feel that Bascco provided sufficient evidences that was very clear and supported his hypothesis.

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