diglossian.

1959 C. A. Ferguson in Word 15 325 Diglossia. In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions.

1959 C. A. Ferguson in Word 15 325 The term ‘diglossia’ is introduced here, modeled on the French diglossie,..since there seems to be no word in regular use for this in English.

1964 E. Palmer tr. A. Martinet Elements Gen. Linguistics v. 139 Linguists have proposed the term ‘diglossia’ to designate a situation where a community uses..both a more colloquial idiom of less prestige and another of more learned and refined status.

1965 Language 41 502 The concept of diglossia rests..on the observation that different languages or dialects enjoy varying social and political status within a community.

1959 C. A. Ferguson in Word 15 334 A full analysis of standard German and Swiss German might show this not to be true in that diglossic situation in view of the extensive morphophonemics of Swiss.

1968 Amer. Speech 43 130 The possibility of an individual being both diglossic and bilingual at the same time is not excluded.

1971 J. Spencer Eng. Lang. W. Afr. 23 For much of the area we are considering there has never existed a diglossic situation, with varieties of Krio and Pidgin competing against the English of the classroom and the written word.

1974 Florida FL Reporter 13 32/3 Native speakers of non-standard English (NSE) who have acquired standard typically develop a set of diglossic language habits.

1982 J. Sledd in Eng. World-wide 3 ii. 246 While claiming that Black English is not inferior, many popularizing linguists act as if it is—and set out to guarantee that as the low language in a diglossic situation, it will remain so.