Diglossia is dead. Long live diglossia? On the linguistic ideology of conservative Basque nationalism

Abstract

This article tracks the discourse on diglossia in conservative Basque nationalism. Historical nationalism advocated a diglossic compartmentalisation which can be framed in Fishman’s scheme (1967, 1972), according to which Spanish was regarded as the H language and Basque as the L variety. Although the currently governing nationalism in the Basque Autonomous Region does not aim to restore that diglossia, it now uses the term diglossia as a vague signifier in order to legitimise the renouncement of achieving both a fully reversing language shift and a social predominance of the Basque language generally, and its own linguistic policy in particular.

Keywords: diglossia, linguistic subordination, linguistic policy, Basque language.