Diglossia in bechar speech community

Abstract

Diglossia is one of the most important sociolinguistics phenomena. It has been introduced by Charles Ferguson in 1959 and it is regarded as one of the linguistic consequences of language contact in general, and bidialectalism in particular. Diglossia is investigated in this research paper taking the area of Bechar which is located in the south-west of Algeria, as a case study. The area under investigation witnesses an alternate use between Standard Arabic and its dialect mainly the dialect spoken by the majority of the population. The topic takes into consideration both the formal and the informal settings of the area and analyzes them. The formal setting involves an analysis of diglossia in the various educational institutions such as primary, middle, and secondary schools; and some administrative places. Diglossia can be also involved in informal settings where ordinary people are interacting with each other using a code which is a mixture of SA and their dialects. Diglossia exists in both settings but its occurrence depends on the nature of the code being used; that is in formal setting the code used is based on SA with dialect interference while in informal settings the code is based on the dialect with the inclusion of SA terms.