Diglossia in Switzerland? A Social Identity Analysis of Speaker Evaluations

Discusses diglossia (a term referring to a speech community in which 2 varieties of a language coexist), describes the language situation to be found in German-speaking Switzerland, and reports an experimental study adopting the matched-guise technique in which language variety (Swiss vs High German) and situational formality (formal vs informal) were orthogonally manipulated in a within-Ss design with 35 14–15 yr old Ss. Speaker evaluations revealed an upgrading with respect to formality of context only on status variables, and an interesting 2-way interaction on solidarity dimensions, whereby less solidarity is felt for a speaker of High German in a formal context. Results support the experimental hypotheses derived from a social identity perspective (H. Tajfel, 1982), but disconfirm predictions from C. A. Ferguson's (1959) concept of diglossia. It is concluded that an adequate taxonomy of language situations must include a consideration of the identity function of language.