Diamesic Variation

doi:10.1017/9781108580410.035

29 - Diamesic Variation

from Part Six - Language, Society, and the Individual

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2022

Maria Selig

Edited by

Adam Ledgeway and

Martin Maiden

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Adam Ledgeway: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Martin Maiden: Affiliation:
University of Oxford

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Summary

Diamesic variation, a concept coined by variationist researchers in Italy, helps to understand the impact of media on linguistic structures and their evolution. By distinguishing medial, sociolinguistic, and functional aspects of diamesic variation, it becomes clear that media not only affect the (phonic and graphic) materiality of signifiers but also interact strongly with diasystematic variation along regional, social, and situational parameters and with variability of verbalization strategies between the poles of communicative immediacy and communicative distance. The latter, functional aspect of diamesic variation is anthropologically rooted and forms a universal, omnipresent background in the history of the Romance languages. Several paradigmatic analyses of Latin and Romance historical data show how the communicative variation between, for example, the maximal degree of familiarity between partners vs formal, public encounters, a high degree of spontaneity vs a high degree of planning, intensive involvement in a situation vs decontextualized speaking and writing determines standardization processes of elaboration, centralization, and codification as well as linguistic change ‘from below’ or ‘from above’.

Keywords

diglossia standardization variational linguistics diamesic variation phonic and graphic exteriority pragmatic and syntactic mode communicative immediacy and communicative distance

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics , pp. 870 - 897

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108580410.035 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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References

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