DOES DIGLOSSIA EXIST IN TAMIL (original) (raw)

Diglossia is the sociolinguistic phenomenon of the existence of more than one variety of a language within a geographical location. The use of such varieties depends upon sociological factors like caste, or class. Diglossia may knowingly or unknowingly become a tool of exclusion and discrimination against certain communities. Here the prevalence of Diglossia has been discussed in the Indian context, with a more focused attention on Tamil. It was found that diglossia exists in Tamil, and amongst other factors caste defines it to the greatest extent. Diglossia is a well-known sociolinguistic phenomenon in which two varieties of language subsist as discernible members of a language spoken in the same geographical location. They generally do not form separate languages due to a variety of shared features, and on the other extreme, they cannot even be considered as dialects of the same language, as they do not fit the bill of a dialect as described by Varshney (1995), who says that a dialect is a regional variety of a given language, and characterizes diglossia as a situation where two widely divergent forms of the same language are in use by all members of the community under different conditions. He further notes that these language forms vary considerably at all levels of language viz. Sounds, words, grammar and meaning. Fergusson (1959) who originally gave the term diglossia, categorized as higher or lower, relative to each other, the stable-overtime varieties of language in use in diglossic communities. His conception of the high variety includes a highly codified variety learned mainly by formal education in which a body of literary works exists. He further conceived of the high variety as the one in which most of the formal and written transactions take place, but which is not used in ordinary transactions. Schiffman (1997) has summarized the main issues being explored, in the field of diglossia, after Fergusson (Post-1959), according to him the 'research on diglossia has concentrated on a number of variables and important questions: function, prestige, literary heritage, acquisition, standardization, stability, grammar, lexicon, phonology, the difference between diglossia and standard