In this paper, we compare the diglossic situation of Biel/Bienne (oral Swiss German vs. written Standard German) with another diglossic setting: the village of Evolène (1500 inhabitants), located in the Swiss alps (French-speaking part of Valais/Wallis), one of the last micro-regions (along with the Alpine valleys of the autonomous Italian region of Val d’Aosta) where the Francoprovençal vernacular is still spoken. We take a closer look at the discourse of inhabitants who are "inside" or "outside" the diglossia (i. e. people who do or do not use the two varieties). In a first section we discuss the notion of diglossia for both contexts. The second section is based on several language biographies of people from Biel/Bienne and Evolène. Via some extracts of our research interviews, we describe different attitudes and representations related to the diglossic situation. In a last section we conclude by clarifying what seems most relevant to us in our data for the theoretical discussion of diglossia.
The terms of the article are as follows. It presents first some theoretical reflexions about the relationship between social representations (as they are conceptualized in sociopsychology) and discourse. This paper claims for a cross-disciplinary point of view which accounts for both disciplinaries: linguistics and sociopsychology. The paper presents also some methodological comments and proposes a way to convey theoretical reflections in a tool – a interview’s guide – especially conceived to obtain interesting conversational datas. This interview’s guide is given in appendix.
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