ADE GUSTIA PUTRI
INDAH AYU WIDUNA
PERMANA PUTRA
LANCANG KUNING UNIVERSITY
1. Background
Nowadays, we often
meet the phenomenon of using two or more languages in communication. Terms
like dialect, language, style, standard language, pidgin,
and creole are part in language or a variety of a language can be said
as a code. Term code, taken from information theory, can be used to
refer to any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication.
(It can actually be used for a system used by a single person, as when someone
devises a private code to protect certain secrets.)
People are nearly always faced with choosing an
appropriate code when they speak. Very young children may be exceptions, as may
learners of a new language (for a while at least) and the victims of certain
pathological conditions. In general, however, when you open your mouth, you
must choose a particular language, dialect, style, register, or variety – that
is, a particular code. You cannot avoid doing so. Moreover, you can and will
shift, as the need arises, from one code to another. Within each code there
will also be the possibility of choices not all of which will have the same
import because some will be more marked than others, i.e., will be more
significant. The various choices will have different social meanings.
We will look mainly at the phenomenon of code-switching
and code-mixing in
bilingual and multilingual situations. However, many of the issues that we will
see there will also arise with those codes which can be called sub-varieties of
a single language, e.g., dialects, styles, and registers.
2. Diglossia
A diglossic situation exists
in a society when it has two distinct codes which show clear functional
separation; that is, one code is employed in one set of circumstances and the
other in an entirely different set.
Ferguson (1959, p. 336) has defined
diglossia as follows:
diglossia
is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary
dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards),
there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex)
superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written
literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which
is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal
spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary
conversation.
In the same article he identifies
four language situations which show the major characteristics of the diglossic
phenomenon. In each situation there is a ‘high’ variety (H) of language and a
‘low’ variety (L). Each variety has its own specialized functions, and each is
viewed differently by those who are aware of both.
A key defining characteristic of
diglossia is that the two varieties are kept quite apart in their functions.
One is used in one set of circumstances and the other in an entirely different
set. For example, the H varieties may be used for delivering sermons and formal
lectures, especially in a parliament or legislative body, for giving political
speeches, for broadcasting the news on radio and television, and for writing
poetry, fine literature, and editorials in newspapers. In contrast, the L
varieties may be used in giving instructions to workers in lowprestige
occupations or to household servants, in conversation with familiars, in ‘soap
operas’ and popular programs on the radio, in captions on political cartoons in
newspapers, and in ‘folk literature.’ On occasion, a person may lecture in an H
variety but answer questions about its contents or explain parts of it in an L
variety so as to ensure understanding.
The H variety is the prestigious,
powerful variety; the L variety lacks prestige and power. In fact, there may be
so little prestige attached to the L variety that people may even deny that
they know it although they may be observed to use it far more frequently than
the H variety. Associated with this prestige valuation for the H variety, there
is likely to be a strong feeling that the prestige is deserved because the H
variety is more beautiful, logical, and expressive than the L variety. That is
why it is deemed appropriate for literary use, for religious purposes, and so
on.
Another important difference between
the H and L varieties is that all children learn the L variety. Some may
concurrently learn the H variety, but many do not learn it at all; e.g., most
Haitians have no knowledge at all of Standard French but all can speak some
variety of Haitian Creole, although some, as I have said, may deny that they
have this ability. The H variety is also likely to be learned in some kind of
formal setting, e.g., in classrooms or as part of a religious or cultural
indoctrination. To that extent, the H variety is ‘taught,’ whereas the L
variety is ‘learned.’ Teaching requires the availability of grammars,
dictionaries, standardized texts, and some widely accepted view about the
nature of what is being taught and how it is most effectively to be taught.
There are usually no comparable grammars, dictionaries, and standardized texts
for the L variety, and any view of that variety is likely to be highly
pejorative in nature. When such grammars and other aids do exist, they have in
many cases been written by outsiders, e.g., ‘foreign’ linguists. They are also
likely to be neither well known to the people whose linguistic usage they describe
nor well received by those people, since such works are unlikely to support
some of the myths that accompany diglossia, particularly the myth that the L
variety lacks any kind of ‘grammar.’
3. Bilingualism
and Multilingualism
We often have mixed feelings when we
discover that someone we meet is fluent in several languages: perhaps a mixture
of admiration and envy but also, occasionally, a feeling of superiority in that
many such people are not ‘native’ to the culture in which we function. Such
people are likely to be immigrants, visitors, or children of ‘mixed’ marriages
and in that respect ‘marked’ in some way, and such marking is not always
regarded favorably.
However, in many parts of the world
an ability to speak more than one language is not at all remarkable. In fact, a
monolingual individual would be regarded as a misfit, lacking an important
skill in society, the skill of being able to interact freely with the speakers
of other languages with whom regular contact is made in the ordinary business
of living. In many parts of the world it is just a normal requirement of daily
living that people speak several languages: perhaps one or more at home,
another in the village, still another for purposes of trade, and yet
another
for contact with the outside world of wider social or political organization.
These various languages are usually acquired naturally and unselfconsciously,
and the shifts from one to another are made without hesitation.
An interesting example of multilingualism
exists among the Tukano of the northwest Amazon, on the border between Colombia
and Brazil (Sorensen, 1971). The Tukano are a multilingual people because men
must marry outside their language group; that is, no man may have a wife who
speaks his language, forthat kind of marriage relationship is not permitted and
would be viewed as a kind of incest. Men choose the women they marry from
various neighboring tribes who speak other languages. Furthermore, on marriage,
women move into the men’s households or longhouses. Consequently, in any
village several languages are used: the language of the men; the various
languages spoken by women who originate from different neighboring tribes; and
a widespread regional ‘trade’ language. Children are born into this
multilingual environment: the child’s father speaks one language, the child’s
mother another, and other women with whom the child has daily contact perhaps
still others. However, everyone in the community is interested in language
learning so most people can speak most of the languages. Multilingualism is
taken for granted, and moving from one language to another in the course of a
single conversation is very common. In fact, multilingualism is so usual that
the Tukano are hardly conscious that they do speak different languages as they
shift easily from one to another. They cannot readily tell an outsider how many
languages they speak, and must be suitably prompted to enumerate which
languages they speak and to describe how well they speak each one.
Spanish and Guaraní exist in a
relationship that Fishman (1980) calls ‘extended diglossic’ in which Spanish is
the H variety and Guaraní the L variety. Spanish is the language used on formal
occasions; it is always used in government business, in conversation with
strangers who are well dressed, with foreigners, and in most business
transactions. People use Guaraní, however, with friends, servants, and
strangers who are poorly dressed, in the confessional, when they tell jokes or
make love, and on most casual occasions. Spanish is the preferred language of
the cities, but Guaraní is preferred in the countryside, and the lower classes
almost always use it for just about every purpose in rural areas.
We can see, therefore, that the
choice between Spanish and Guaraní depends on a variety of factors: location
(city or country), formality, gender, status, intimacy, seriousness, and type
of activity. The choice of one code rather than the other is obviously related
to situation. Paraguay identity requires you to be attuned to the uses of Spanish
and Guaraní, to be aware that they ‘mean’ different things, and that it is not
only what you say that is important but which language you choose to say it in.
A bilingual, or multilingual,
situation can produce still other effects on one or more of the languages
involved. As we have just seen, it can lead to loss, e.g., language loss among
immigrants. But sometimes it leads to diffusion; that is, certain features
spread from one language to the other (or others) as a result of the contact
situation, particularly certain kinds of syntactic features. This phenomenon
has been observed in such areas as the Balkans, the south of India, and Sri
Lanka. Gumperz and Wilson (1971) report that in Kupwar, a small village of
about 3,000 inhabitants in Maharashtra, India, four languages are spoken:
Marathi and Urdu (both of which are Indo-European) and Kannada (a non-
Indo-European language). A few people also speak Telugu (also a non-Indo-
European language). The languages are distributed mainly by caste. The highest
caste, the Jains, speak Kannada and the lowest caste, the untouchables, speak
Marathi. People in different castes must speak to one another and to the
Teluguspeaking rope-makers. The Urdu-speaking Muslims must also be fitted in.
Bilingualism or even trilingualism is normal, particularly among the men, but
it is Marathi which dominates inter-group communication. One linguistic
consequence, however, is that there has been some convergence of the languages
that are spoken in the village so far as syntax is concerned, but vocabulary
differences have been maintained (McMahon, 1994, pp. 214–16). It is vocabulary
rather than syntax which now serves to distinguish the groups, and the variety
of multilingualism that has resulted is a special local variety which has developed
in response to local needs.
4. Code
mixing
Code
mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound
morphemes), words (unbound morphemes), phrases and clauses from a cooperative
activity where the participants, in order to in infer what is intended, must
reconcile what they hear with what they understand. Code mixing is consequence
of bilingualsm or multingulism.
Example
:
Ibu
A : Bu H, kumaha cai tadi wengi? Di abdi mah tabuh sapuluh nembe ngocor,
kitu ge alit.
Ibu
H : Sami atuh. Bagaimana ibu T, nih? Kan biasanya air lancar.
Conversation
above has two languages : Sundanese and Bahasa.
Actually, in code-mixing we just
take word by word from other language. It means we keep to our own language but
just adding some words from others caused by some factors.
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