Digraphia
Encyclopedia
In sociolinguistics
, digraphia refers to the use of more than one writing system
for the same language. Some scholars differentiate between synchronic digraphia with the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language and diachronic (or sequential) digraphia with the replacement of one writing system by another for a particular language. Synchronic
and diachronic examples are Hindi-Urdu, which is written in the Devanagari script or the Perso-Arabic script
, and Turkish
, which replaced an Arabic-based writing system with a Latin-based system in 1928. Digraphia has implications in language planning
, language policy
, and language ideology
.
digraphie, etymologically
derives from Greek
di- δι- "twice" and -graphia -γραϕία "writing".
Digraphia was modeled upon diglossia "the coexistence of two languages or dialects among a certain population", which derives from Greek diglossos δίγλωσσος "bilingual." Charles A. Ferguson
, a founder of sociolinguistics
, coined diglossia in 1959. Grivelet analyzes how the influence of diglossia on the unrelated notion of digraphia has "introduced some distortion in the process of defining digraphia," such as distinguishing "high" and "low" varieties. Peter Unseth notes one usage of "digraphia" that most closely parallels Ferguson’s “diglossia,” situations where a language uses different scripts for different domains; for instance, "shorthand in English, pinyin in Chinese for alphabetizing library files, etc. or several scripts which are replaced by Roman script during e-mail usage."
, which does not yet include digraphia, enters two digraph terms and digraphic. First, the linguistic term digraph is defined as, "A group of two letters expressing a simple sound of speech". This meaning applies to both two letters representing a single speech sound in orthography
(e.g., English ng representing the velar nasal
/ŋ/) and a single grapheme with two letters in typographical ligature (e.g., the Old English Latin alphabet letter æ
). Second, the graph theory
term digraph (a portmanteau from directed graph
) is defined as, "A graph in which each line has a direction associated with it; a finite, non-empty set of elements together with a set of ordered pairs of these elements." The two digraph terms were first recorded in 1788 and 1955, respectively. The OED2 defines two digraphic meanings, "Pertaining to or of the nature of a digraph" and "Written in two different characters or alphabets." It gives their earliest examples in 1873 and 1880 (which was used meaning "digraphia"). Isaac Hollister Hall
, an American scholar of Oriental studies
, described an Eteocypriot language publication as "bilingual (or digraphic, as both inscriptions are in the same language)." Hall's article was antedated by Demetrios Pieridis
's 1875 usage of digraphic instead of bilingual for an inscription written in both the Greek alphabet
and Cypriot syllabary
.
English digraphic and digraphia were contemporaneous with their corresponding terms in French linguistics. In 1877, Julius Oppert
introduced digraphique to describe languages written in cuneiform
syllabaries. In 1893, Auguste Barth
used French digraphisme for Cambodian inscriptions written in Khmer script
and Brāhmī script
. In 1971, Robèrt Lafont
coined digraphie regarding the sociolinguistics of French and Occitan.
Although the word "digraphia" is new, the practice is ancient. Darius the Great's (c. 522-486 BCE) Behistun Inscription
was written in three cuneiform script
s for Old Persian, Elamite
, and Babylonian.
The Songhay
linguist Petr Zima (1974) first used "digraphia" to describe the Hausa language
having two writing systems, Boko
(Latin alphabet
) and Ajami script
(Arabic alphabet
). Zima differentiated these paired situations.
Usage of "diorthographia" is unusual. Compare dysgraphia
meaning "a language disorder that affects a person's ability to write" and dysorthographia "a synonym for dyslexia
".
The anthropologist James R. Jaquith (1976), who studied unconventional spelling in advertising, used "digraphia" to describe the practice of writing brand names in all caps
(e.g., ARRID
). He described digraphia as "the graphic analog of what linguists call diglossia", and defined it as "different versions of a written language exist simultaneously and in complementary distribution in a speech community."
The sociolinguist Ian R. H. Dale (1980) wrote a general survey of digraphia, defined as, "the use of two (or more) writing systems to represent varieties of a single language."
The sinologist and lexicographer John DeFrancis
(1984) used digraphia, defined as "the use of two or more different systems of writing the same language," to translate Chinese shuangwenzhi (双文制 "two-script system") of writing in Chinese characters and Pinyin
. DeFrancis later explained, "I have been incorrectly credited with coining the term digraphia, which I indeed thought I had created as a parallel in writing to Charles Ferguson’s diglossia in speech."
, which includes over 425,000,000 words, lists digraphia three times in "academic genre" contexts.
Stéphane Grivelet, who edited a special "Digraphia: Writing systems and society" issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language
, explains.
Digraphia has some rare synonyms. Orthographic diglossia antedates digraphia, and was noted by Paul Wexler in 1971." Bigraphism, bialphabetism, and biscriptality are infrequently used.
Some scholars avoid using the word "digraphia". Describing terminology for "script obsolescence," Stephen D. Houston
, John Baines
, and Jerrold Cooper say, "'Biscript' refers to a text in two different writing systems. 'Biliteracy' and 'triliteracy' label the concurrent use of two or three scripts."
's classic division between synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics
. Dale first differentiated "diachronic (or historical) digraphia" ("more than one writing system used for a given language in successive periods of time") and "synchronic digraphia" ("more than one writing system used contemporaneously for the same language"). Dale concluded that,
Some recent scholarship questions the practicality of this synchronic/diachronic distinction. Grivelet contends that, "digraphia is a single sociolinguistic process with two types of outcome (concurrent or sequential digraphia) and with specific features related to the causes and types of development of the various cases.
Peter Unseth lists and exemplifies four factors that can influence a language community's choice of a script.
Linguists who study language and gender have analyzed gender-differentiated speech varieties ("genderlects", usually spoken by women), and there are a few cases of scripts predominantly used by women. Japanese hiragana was initially a women's script, for instance, used by Murasaki Shikibu
to write The Tale of Genji
. Chinese Nüshu script (literally "women's writing) is a simplification of characters that was traditionally used by women in Jiangyong County
of Hunan
province.
Not only scripts, but also letters can have iconic power to differentiate social groups. For example, the names of many heavy metal bands (e.g., Motörhead, Infernäl Mäjesty
, Mötley Crüe
) use umlauts "to index the musical genre as well as the notion of ‘Gothic’ more generally." This digraphic usage is called the "metal umlaut" (or "röck döts").
in both Gaj's Latin alphabet and Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
. Although most Serbian and Croatian
speakers can read and write both alphabetizations, Latin
letters are largely used by Roman Catholic Croatians and Cyrillic
letters largely used by Orthodox Serbians.
The Japanese writing system
has unusually complex digraphia. William C. Hannas distinguishes two digraphic forms of Japanese: "true digraphia" of occasionally using rōmaji Latin alphabet for a few loanwords like DVD, and of regularly using three scripts (technically, "trigraphia") for different functions. Japanese is written with kanji
"Chinese character" logographs
used for Sino-Japanese vocabulary; hiragana
used for native Japanese words; and katakana
used for foreign borrowings or graphic emphasis. Take Nihon for instance, the primary name of Japan
. It is normally written 日本 (literally, "sun's origin") in kanji – but is occasionally written にほん in hiragana, ニホン in katakana, or Nihon in rōmaji ("romanization"). Japanese users having a certain amount of flexibility in choosing between scripts, and their choices can have social meaning.
Another example is the Malay language
, which most often uses the Latin alphabet
, while in certain geographic areas (Kelantan state of Malaysia, Brunei) it is also written with an adapted Arabic alphabet called Jawi.
An element of synchronic digraphia is present in many languages not using the Latin script, in particular in text messages and when typing on a computer which does not have the facility to represent the usual script for that language. In such cases, Latin script is often used, although systems of transcription are often not standardised.
Digraphia is controversial in modern Written Chinese. The ongoing debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
concerns "diglyphia" or "pluricentricity
" rather than digraphia. Chinese digraphia involves the use of both Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin romanization. Pinyin is officially approved for a few special uses, such as annotating characters for learners of Chinese and transcribing Chinese names. Nevertheless, Pinyin continues to be adopted for other functions, such as computers, education, library catalogs, and merchandise labels. Among Chinese input methods for computers
, Pinyin is the most popular phonetic method. Zhou Youguang
predicts, "Digraphia is perhaps the key for Chinese to enter the age of Information processing." Many writers, both from China (e.g., Mao Dun
and Zhou Youguang) and from abroad (e.g., John DeFrancis, Victor H. Mair
, J. Marshall Unger
, and William Hannas) have argued for digraphia to be implemented as a Chinese language standard. These digraphic reformers call for a generalized used of Pinyin orthography along with Chinese characters.
Yat-Shing Cheung differentiates three Chinese digraphic situations. (1) Both the High and the Low forms derive from the same script system: traditional and simplified characters. (2) Both forms derive from the same system but the Low form borrows foreign elements: Putonghua and topolects (or "dialects"). (3) The High and the Low forms derive from two different script systems: Chinese characters and pinyin.
or suddenly through language reform
. "Abrupt script shift can be seen in the change of Turkish from Arabic script to Roman (in one year), while a gradual change of script can be seen in the change from writing Korean in Chinese characters to Hangul (a process that arguably nearly spanned five centuries)."
The Azerbaijani language
provides an "extreme example" of diachronic digraphia; it has historically been written in runic
, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabets.
There are many examples where a language used to be written in a script, that was replaced later. Examples are Romanian
(which originally used Cyrillic then changed to Latin
); Turkish
and Kiswahili
began with the Arabic then Latin
, and many languages of former Soviet Central Asia
, which abandoned the Cyrillic script after the dissolution of the USSR. DeFrancis notes, "The old literature in the earlier scripts remains, however, so that all these scripts more or less overlap in use, by scholars involved with early texts, or for reprinting earlier materials for a wider readership and for other limited uses."
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
, digraphia refers to the use of more than one writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
for the same language. Some scholars differentiate between synchronic digraphia with the coexistence of two or more writing systems for the same language and diachronic (or sequential) digraphia with the replacement of one writing system by another for a particular language. Synchronic
Synchronic analysis
In linguistics, a synchronic analysis is one that views linguistic phenomena only at one point in time, usually the present, though a synchronic analysis of a historical language form is also possible. This may be distinguished from diachronics, which regards a phenomenon in terms of developments...
and diachronic examples are Hindi-Urdu, which is written in the Devanagari script or the Perso-Arabic script
Perso-Arabic script
The Persian or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language, adding four letters: , , , and . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add other letters...
, and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, which replaced an Arabic-based writing system with a Latin-based system in 1928. Digraphia has implications in language planning
Language planning
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
, language policy
Language policy
Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
, and language ideology
Language ideology
In sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, a language or linguistic ideology is a systematic construct about how particular ways of using languages carry or are invested with certain moral, religious, social, and political values, giving rise to implicit assumptions that people have about a...
.
Terminology
Digraphia "using two writing systems for the same language" is an uncommon term, generally restricted to linguistic contexts.Etymology
English digraphia, like FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
digraphie, etymologically
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
derives from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
di- δι- "twice" and -graphia -γραϕία "writing".
Digraphia was modeled upon diglossia "the coexistence of two languages or dialects among a certain population", which derives from Greek diglossos δίγλωσσος "bilingual." Charles A. Ferguson
Charles A. Ferguson
Charles Albert Ferguson was a U.S. linguist who taught at Stanford University. He was one the founders of sociolinguistics and is best known for his work on diglossia. The TOEFL test was created under his leadership at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC...
, a founder of sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
, coined diglossia in 1959. Grivelet analyzes how the influence of diglossia on the unrelated notion of digraphia has "introduced some distortion in the process of defining digraphia," such as distinguishing "high" and "low" varieties. Peter Unseth notes one usage of "digraphia" that most closely parallels Ferguson’s “diglossia,” situations where a language uses different scripts for different domains; for instance, "shorthand in English, pinyin in Chinese for alphabetizing library files, etc. or several scripts which are replaced by Roman script during e-mail usage."
History
The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
, which does not yet include digraphia, enters two digraph terms and digraphic. First, the linguistic term digraph is defined as, "A group of two letters expressing a simple sound of speech". This meaning applies to both two letters representing a single speech sound in orthography
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
(e.g., English ng representing the velar nasal
Velar nasal
The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
/ŋ/) and a single grapheme with two letters in typographical ligature (e.g., the Old English Latin alphabet letter æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
). Second, the graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
term digraph (a portmanteau from directed graph
Directed graph
A directed graph or digraph is a pair G= of:* a set V, whose elements are called vertices or nodes,...
) is defined as, "A graph in which each line has a direction associated with it; a finite, non-empty set of elements together with a set of ordered pairs of these elements." The two digraph terms were first recorded in 1788 and 1955, respectively. The OED2 defines two digraphic meanings, "Pertaining to or of the nature of a digraph" and "Written in two different characters or alphabets." It gives their earliest examples in 1873 and 1880 (which was used meaning "digraphia"). Isaac Hollister Hall
Isaac Hollister Hall
Isaac Hollister Hall was an American Orientalist born in Norwalk, Connecticut.He graduated at Hamilton College in 1859, was a tutor there in 1859-1863, graduated from Columbia Law School in 1865, practised law in New York City until 1875, and, during 1875-1877, taught in the Syrian Protestant...
, an American scholar of Oriental studies
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
, described an Eteocypriot language publication as "bilingual (or digraphic, as both inscriptions are in the same language)." Hall's article was antedated by Demetrios Pieridis
Demetrios Pieridis
Demetrios Pierides , Greek Cypriot son of Pierakis Demetriou Corella and Maria Caridi . He was a banker, vice consul of Great Britain and collector of ancient Cypriot artefacts.-History and Career:...
's 1875 usage of digraphic instead of bilingual for an inscription written in both the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
and Cypriot syllabary
Cypriot syllabary
The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...
.
English digraphic and digraphia were contemporaneous with their corresponding terms in French linguistics. In 1877, Julius Oppert
Julius Oppert
Julius Oppert , French-German Assyriologist, was born at Hamburg, of Jewish parents.After studying at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, he graduated at Kiel in 1847; and the next year went to France, where he was teacher of German at Laval and at Reims...
introduced digraphique to describe languages written in cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
syllabaries. In 1893, Auguste Barth
Auguste Barth
Auguste Barth was a French orientalist.-Biography:He is best known by his work in connection with the religions of India. His volume, Les religions de l'Inde , was translated into English...
used French digraphisme for Cambodian inscriptions written in Khmer script
Khmer script
The Khmer script is an alphasyllabary script used to write the Khmer language . It is also used to write Pali among the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and Thailand....
and Brāhmī script
Brāhmī script
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
. In 1971, Robèrt Lafont
Robèrt Lafont
Robèrt Lafont was an Occitan intellectual from Provence. He was a linguist, an author, an historian, an expert in literature and a political theoretician. His name in French reads Robert Lafont....
coined digraphie regarding the sociolinguistics of French and Occitan.
Although the word "digraphia" is new, the practice is ancient. Darius the Great's (c. 522-486 BCE) Behistun Inscription
Behistun Inscription
The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون...
was written in three cuneiform script
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
s for Old Persian, Elamite
Elamite language
Elamite is an extinct language spoken by the ancient Elamites. Elamite was the primary language in present day Iran from 2800–550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great....
, and Babylonian.
Neologizers
Four authors independently neologized English digraphia from diglossia.The Songhay
Songhay languages
The Songhay, Songhai, or Songai languages are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the...
linguist Petr Zima (1974) first used "digraphia" to describe the Hausa language
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
having two writing systems, Boko
Boko (alphabet)
Boko is a Latin alphabet devised by Europeans in the early 19th century for the Hausa language. It was developed and introduced in the early 20th century by the British and French colonial authorities and used as the official script of the Hausa language. It was made the official alphabet in 1930...
(Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
) and Ajami script
Ajami script
The term Ajami , or Ajamiyya , which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign" or "stranger," has been applied to Arabic alphabets used for writing African languages....
(Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
). Zima differentiated these paired situations.
- Digraphia: "Two types of written form of one language co-exist, based upon the usage of two distinct graphical systems (scripts) by the respective language community."
- Diorthographia: "Two types of written form of a particular language co-exist, using the same script, but they are based upon the usage of two distinct orthographies by the same language community."
Usage of "diorthographia" is unusual. Compare dysgraphia
Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia is a deficiency in the ability to write primarily in terms of handwriting, but also in terms of coherence. It occurs regardless of the ability to read and is not due to intellectual impairment...
meaning "a language disorder that affects a person's ability to write" and dysorthographia "a synonym for dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
".
The anthropologist James R. Jaquith (1976), who studied unconventional spelling in advertising, used "digraphia" to describe the practice of writing brand names in all caps
All caps
In typography, all caps refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters. All caps is usually used for emphasis. It is commonly seen in the titles on book covers, in advertisements and in newspaper headlines...
(e.g., ARRID
Arrid
Arrid is a type of antiperspirant and deodorant originally introduced in 1935 by Carter Products and was acquired by Church and Dwight in 2001. The active ingredient is up to 20% aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly.-Advertising:...
). He described digraphia as "the graphic analog of what linguists call diglossia", and defined it as "different versions of a written language exist simultaneously and in complementary distribution in a speech community."
The sociolinguist Ian R. H. Dale (1980) wrote a general survey of digraphia, defined as, "the use of two (or more) writing systems to represent varieties of a single language."
The sinologist and lexicographer John DeFrancis
John DeFrancis
John DeFrancis was an American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa....
(1984) used digraphia, defined as "the use of two or more different systems of writing the same language," to translate Chinese shuangwenzhi (双文制 "two-script system") of writing in Chinese characters and Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
. DeFrancis later explained, "I have been incorrectly credited with coining the term digraphia, which I indeed thought I had created as a parallel in writing to Charles Ferguson’s diglossia in speech."
Usage
Digraphia is an uncommon term in current English usage. For instance, the Corpus of Contemporary American EnglishCorpus of Contemporary American English
The freely-searchable 425 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English is the largest corpus of American English currently available, and the only publicly-available corpus of American English to contain a wide array of texts from a number of genres.It was created by Mark Davies, Professor...
, which includes over 425,000,000 words, lists digraphia three times in "academic genre" contexts.
Stéphane Grivelet, who edited a special "Digraphia: Writing systems and society" issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
The International Journal of the Sociology of Language is a peer reviewed scientific journal, the main journal in the field of Sociology of language. It was founded by Joshua Fishman who is still its general editor...
, explains.
After 25 years and various articles on the subject, there are still important differences in the scope of the definition, and the notion itself is rarely used in sociolinguistics, apart from the field of Chinese studies, where the notion of digraphia is nowadays frequently used to describe the coexistence of two writing systems: Chinese script and Pinyin.
Digraphia has some rare synonyms. Orthographic diglossia antedates digraphia, and was noted by Paul Wexler in 1971." Bigraphism, bialphabetism, and biscriptality are infrequently used.
Some scholars avoid using the word "digraphia". Describing terminology for "script obsolescence," Stephen D. Houston
Stephen D. Houston
Stephen Douglas Houston is an American anthropologist, archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar, who is particularly renowned for his research into the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica...
, John Baines
John Baines
John Baines is the incumbent Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and a fellow of The Queen's College. He is the author of multiple scholarly articles and publications relating to ancient Egyptian civilization....
, and Jerrold Cooper say, "'Biscript' refers to a text in two different writing systems. 'Biliteracy' and 'triliteracy' label the concurrent use of two or three scripts."
Theoretical aspects
Digraphia can be either "synchronic" (or "concurrent") or "diachronic" ("historical" or "sequential"), extending Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
's classic division between synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
. Dale first differentiated "diachronic (or historical) digraphia" ("more than one writing system used for a given language in successive periods of time") and "synchronic digraphia" ("more than one writing system used contemporaneously for the same language"). Dale concluded that,
Two primary factors have been identified as operating on a society in the choice of script for representing its language. These are the prevailing cultural influence (often a religion) and the prevailing political influence of the period in which the choice is made. Synchronic digraphia results when more than one such influence is operating and none can dominate all groups of speakers of the language in question [ … ] Diachronic digraphia results when different influences prevail over a given speech community at different times.
Some recent scholarship questions the practicality of this synchronic/diachronic distinction. Grivelet contends that, "digraphia is a single sociolinguistic process with two types of outcome (concurrent or sequential digraphia) and with specific features related to the causes and types of development of the various cases.
Peter Unseth lists and exemplifies four factors that can influence a language community's choice of a script.
- "To identify themselves with a group." In the 1940s, Mongolia replaced the traditional Mongolian scriptMongolian scriptThe classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...
first briefly with the Mongolian Latin alphabet and then, under Soviet influence, with the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabetMongolian Cyrillic alphabetThe Mongolian Cyrillic script is the writing system used for the Khalkha dialect of the Mongolian language as the standard dialect of the modern state of Mongolia. Cyrillic has not been adopted by the Khalkha in the Inner Mongolia region of China, who still use the Mongolian script.Mongolian...
. From the 1980's, the Mongolian script was reintroduced into schools for its historical and cultural importance. - "To distance themselves from a group." In the mid-19th century, the Mormon Church developed and promoted the Deseret alphabetDeseret alphabetThe Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In public statements, Young claimed the...
for English. Brigham YoungBrigham YoungBrigham Young was an American leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and a settler of the Western United States. He was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877, he founded Salt Lake City, and he served as the first governor of the Utah...
publically claimed it was more phonetically accurate than Latin script and would facilitate learning to read and write English. However, historian David Bigler says the Deseret alphabet "demonstrated cultural exclusivism, an important consideration. It also kept secrets from curious non-Mormons, [and] controlled what children would be allowed to read." - Participation in developments on a broader scale. The choice of a script can influence a group's preparedness to interact with other regional or international groups. For instance, the Hmong languageHmong languageHmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...
has numerous alternate writing systems. Hmong who live in Southeast Asia prefer the indigenous Romanized Popular AlphabetRomanized Popular AlphabetThe Romanized Popular Alphabet or Hmong RPA , is a system of romanization for the various dialects of the Hmong language. Created in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by a group of missionaries and Hmong advisers, it has gone on to become the most widespread system for writing the Hmong language in the...
(RPA) or the Pahawh HmongPahawh HmongPahawh Hmong is an indigenous semi-syllabic script, invented in 1959, to write the Hmong language.-Form:Pahawh is written left to right...
semi-syllabarySemi-syllabaryA semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The term has traditionally been extended to abugidas, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some letters are alphabetic and others are syllabic.-Iberian...
; Hmong expatriates who live in the United States prefer to romanize names differently, such as Latin Hmong instead of RPA Hmoob. - "Linguistic considerations." Sometimes a foreign script is rejected because it is unsuitable for the phonetics of a language. KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
was first written in logographic HanjaHanjaHanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
Chinese characters, but king Sejong the Great promulgated the HangulHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
alphabet, which is better suited for transcribing Korean phonologyKorean phonologyThis article is a technical description of the phonetics and phonology of Korean.Korean has many allophones, so it is important here to distinguish morphophonemics from corresponding phonemes and allophones .-Consonants:The following are phonemic transcriptions of Korean consonants.# are voiced ...
. In the present day, South Korean uses both Hanja logographs and Hangul letters, while North KoreaNorth KoreaThe Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
uses only Hangul.
Linguists who study language and gender have analyzed gender-differentiated speech varieties ("genderlects", usually spoken by women), and there are a few cases of scripts predominantly used by women. Japanese hiragana was initially a women's script, for instance, used by Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
to write The Tale of Genji
The Tale of Genji
is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...
. Chinese Nüshu script (literally "women's writing) is a simplification of characters that was traditionally used by women in Jiangyong County
Jiangyong County
Jiangyong County is a county located in the southwestern part of the prefecture of Yongzhou in Hunan province, China. Nüshu is a local script understood only by women in Jiangyong County....
of Hunan
Hunan
' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
province.
Not only scripts, but also letters can have iconic power to differentiate social groups. For example, the names of many heavy metal bands (e.g., Motörhead, Infernäl Mäjesty
Infernäl Mäjesty
Infernäl Mäjesty is a Canadian thrash metal band, formed in Toronto in 1986. They are best known for their debut album None Shall Defy, released in 1987. However, the 1998 re-issue by Displeased Records inspired the band to get back together and recorded a new album, followed by a European tour...
, Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
) use umlauts "to index the musical genre as well as the notion of ‘Gothic’ more generally." This digraphic usage is called the "metal umlaut" (or "röck döts").
Synchronic digraphia
A modern example of synchronic digraphia is writing Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
in both Gaj's Latin alphabet and Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is an adaptation of the Cyrillic script for the Serbian language, developed in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two standard modern alphabets used to write the Serbian language, the other being Latin...
. Although most Serbian and Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
speakers can read and write both alphabetizations, Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
letters are largely used by Roman Catholic Croatians and Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
letters largely used by Orthodox Serbians.
The Japanese writing system
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...
has unusually complex digraphia. William C. Hannas distinguishes two digraphic forms of Japanese: "true digraphia" of occasionally using rōmaji Latin alphabet for a few loanwords like DVD, and of regularly using three scripts (technically, "trigraphia") for different functions. Japanese is written with kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
"Chinese character" logographs
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
used for Sino-Japanese vocabulary; hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
used for native Japanese words; and katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
used for foreign borrowings or graphic emphasis. Take Nihon for instance, the primary name of Japan
Names of Japan
There are many names of Japan in the English, Japanese, and other languages. The word "Japan" is an exonym, and is used by a large number of languages. The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon and Nihon . They are both written in Japanese using the kanji 日本...
. It is normally written 日本 (literally, "sun's origin") in kanji – but is occasionally written にほん in hiragana, ニホン in katakana, or Nihon in rōmaji ("romanization"). Japanese users having a certain amount of flexibility in choosing between scripts, and their choices can have social meaning.
Another example is the Malay language
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, which most often uses the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, while in certain geographic areas (Kelantan state of Malaysia, Brunei) it is also written with an adapted Arabic alphabet called Jawi.
An element of synchronic digraphia is present in many languages not using the Latin script, in particular in text messages and when typing on a computer which does not have the facility to represent the usual script for that language. In such cases, Latin script is often used, although systems of transcription are often not standardised.
Digraphia is controversial in modern Written Chinese. The ongoing debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
The debate on traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters is an ongoing debate concerning Chinese orthography among users of Chinese characters. It has stirred up heated responses from supporters of both sides in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and among overseas...
concerns "diglyphia" or "pluricentricity
Pluricentric language
A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not, or did not, coincide.-English:...
" rather than digraphia. Chinese digraphia involves the use of both Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin romanization. Pinyin is officially approved for a few special uses, such as annotating characters for learners of Chinese and transcribing Chinese names. Nevertheless, Pinyin continues to be adopted for other functions, such as computers, education, library catalogs, and merchandise labels. Among Chinese input methods for computers
Chinese input methods for computers
Hundreds of Chinese input methods are available for entry of Chinese characters into computers, but most keyboard-based methods rely on either pinyin phonetic readings or root shapes in Chinese characters...
, Pinyin is the most popular phonetic method. Zhou Youguang
Zhou Youguang
Zhou Youguang is a Chinese linguist who is often credited as the "father of Hanyu Pinyin", the official romanization for Mandarin in the People's Republic of China. He was born in Changzhou.-Education and early career:...
predicts, "Digraphia is perhaps the key for Chinese to enter the age of Information processing." Many writers, both from China (e.g., Mao Dun
Mao Dun
Mao Dun was the pen name of Shen Dehong , a 20th century Chinese novelist, cultural critic, and journalist. He was also the Minister of Culture of China from 1949 to 1965. He is currently renowned as one of the best realist novelists in the history of modern China...
and Zhou Youguang) and from abroad (e.g., John DeFrancis, Victor H. Mair
Victor H. Mair
Victor Henry Mair is a Philologist specializing in Sinitic and Indo-European languages, and holds the position of Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States...
, J. Marshall Unger
J. Marshall Unger
James Marshall Unger, , is a professor of Japanese at Ohio State University who specializes in historical linguistics and the writing systems of East Asia.- Works :...
, and William Hannas) have argued for digraphia to be implemented as a Chinese language standard. These digraphic reformers call for a generalized used of Pinyin orthography along with Chinese characters.
Yat-Shing Cheung differentiates three Chinese digraphic situations. (1) Both the High and the Low forms derive from the same script system: traditional and simplified characters. (2) Both forms derive from the same system but the Low form borrows foreign elements: Putonghua and topolects (or "dialects"). (3) The High and the Low forms derive from two different script systems: Chinese characters and pinyin.
Diachronic digraphia
"Diachronic" or "sequential digraphia", in which a language switches writing systems, can occur historically through language changeLanguage change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
or suddenly through language reform
Language reform
Language reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
. "Abrupt script shift can be seen in the change of Turkish from Arabic script to Roman (in one year), while a gradual change of script can be seen in the change from writing Korean in Chinese characters to Hangul (a process that arguably nearly spanned five centuries)."
The Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
provides an "extreme example" of diachronic digraphia; it has historically been written in runic
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabets.
There are many examples where a language used to be written in a script, that was replaced later. Examples are Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
(which originally used Cyrillic then changed to Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
); Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and Kiswahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
began with the Arabic then Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, and many languages of former Soviet Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, which abandoned the Cyrillic script after the dissolution of the USSR. DeFrancis notes, "The old literature in the earlier scripts remains, however, so that all these scripts more or less overlap in use, by scholars involved with early texts, or for reprinting earlier materials for a wider readership and for other limited uses."
External links
- New Perspectives on Digraphia, Elena Berlanda
- Biscriptality – Sociolinguistic and Cultural Scenarios Conference, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
- Writing Systems and Society, "Scripts become flags", Ozideas
- Diglossia as a Sociolinguistic Situation, Harold F. Schiffman