O tzv. české diglosii v současném světě

• Authors: Neil Bermel

Title variants

EN

On the alleged Czech diglossia in the contemporary world

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article considers the development of the definitions of diglossia and diglossic language communities from Ferguson’s original 1959 proposal through to the present day and their bearing on Czech. Czech has often been proposed as an example of diglossia, and this article tests some of these definitions against the Czech language situation in Bohemia, bringing to bear examples of current usage from a variety of situations, including television, advertising, business meetings, and e-mail. The examples demonstrate the degree to which features of different codes are intermingled in speech and writing in a way proscribed under descriptions of diglossia. They also testify to growth in new means of communication that mix features of the high and low varieties. The current Czech language situation is thus analysed as “post-diglossic”, with many of the attitudes and beliefs associated with diglossia still persisting in the Czech environment, while actual language usage exhibits diglossic patterns in an ever-narrowing range of communicative situations.

Keywords

CS

diglosie; registr; obecná čeština; spisovná čeština; přepínání kódů

EN

diglossia; register; Common Czech; Standard Czech; code-switching

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovo a slovesnost: časopis pro otázky teorie a kultury jazyka (Slovo a slovesnost: A journal for the theory of language and language cultivation)
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 71
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5-30
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Neil Bermel

• Slovo a slovesnost, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic