Diglossia in the Etiology of Schizophrenia

Abstract

A hypothesis offering diglossia as a potential risk factor for schizophrenia is presented. This is supported primarily by an account of the numerous co-occurrences between the diglossic phenomenon and the established risk factors and features of schizophrenia, such as language impairment, working memory dysfunction, social adversity, urbanicity, migration and ethnicity, as well as some of the broader educational elements including illiteracy, reading deficits and poor academic attainment. With an emphasis on the inherent role of language in schizophrenia and the demand for elucidating a mechanism behind its risk factors, we propose that a diglossic environment in childhood may constitute a neurodevelopmental insult predisposing to the development of the disorder. This relationship may be mediated by the reduced lateralization of language in the brain which has been observed in relation to schizophrenia.

On the existence of a linguistic distance in schizophrenia

“…The article entitled ‘Social disadvantage, linguistic distance, ethnic minority status and first-episode psychosis: results from the EU-GEI case–control study’ by Jongsma et al, in Psychological Medicine (Jongsma et al, 2020) is an admirable attempt towards an appreciation of the sociocultural linguistic factors in psychosis. Though somewhat consistent with our recent proposal of the interplay of language phenomena, ethnicity, migration and urbanicity in the aetiology of schizophrenia (Alherz, Almusawi, & Barry, 2019), there are key conceptual considerations surrounding their conceived linguistic distance exposure and its interpretation. In linguistics, this is a theoretical measure for the extent to which dialects and languages differ, but without a standardised approach due to its unbounded interpretations.…”

“…For example, do migrants in England from the Spanish-speaking and the English-speaking Caribbean share the same risk of psychosis? A more universal linguistic explanation that is inclusive of the risk in natives and same-language speakers as we suspect, should also consider the substantial variations in dialect and their hierarchical relationship with a desirable language form as captured by diglossia (Alherz et al, 2019). This would also be more reflective of the proposed cultural distance, as the created mismatch exposure in England could consider a German-speaker from Germany as distant, while an English-speaker from the Caribbean is considered unexposed despite an arguably greater difference in culture.…”

Factors Affecting the Writing Performance in Hearing and Deaf Children: An Insight into Regularities and Irregularities of the Arabic Orthographic System

“…Despite such differences on all linguistic levels, and while the mother tongue dialect is the primary spoken language, Arab children are still auditorily engaged with the standard form of Arabic through some television programs as well as prayers and occasional religious ceremonies. This continues throughout life with the situational demand for either language form (Alherz et al, 2019). For phoneme-to-grapheme relationships in spelling, several features of the Arabic language presented throughout, if improperly mastered, can obstruct the nonlexical route for the accurate spelling of unfamiliar words.…”

“…Despite such differences on all linguistic levels, and while the mother tongue dialect is the primary spoken language, Arab children are still auditorily engaged with the standard form of Arabic through some television programs as well as prayers and occasional religious ceremonies. This continues throughout life with the situational demand for either language form (Alherz et al, 2019).…”

Disparities in health literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic between the hearing and deaf communities

“…Poor literacy is also a determinant of increased hospital admissions and mortality among hearing people ( Baker et al, 1998 , 2007 ; DeWalt et al, 2004 ). An additional challenge in the context of this study is the diglossia of the Arabic language, where “high” societal functions including official health information are communicated predominantly using the literary form of Arabic, instead of the more familiar yet highly distinct dialects ( Alherz et al, 2019 ).…”