Winter 2002
Directed Reading with Professor Amado Padilla:
Second Language Acquisition

Diglossia and Paraguay

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Rubin – Bilingual Usage in Paraguay

Rubin, Joan (1968). Bilingual Usage in Paraguay. In Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the Sociology of language, pp.513-531. Paris: The Hague.

This article addresses the social factors that might be related to language choice in different contexts in Paraguayan society. Social factors that are mentioned in this article are: the relationship between the two people involved in conversation, attributes of either the speaker or addressee, such as their SES or origin – urban/rural, formal/informal, public/private, etc. Rubin conducted a study where she administered questionnaires to bilinguals in a rural and town area of Paraguay. She asked several questions where the informant was asked to indicate which language he/she used in certain circumstances. Among the results of this study is the notion that Guaraní is more widely used in the rural sector, and the formality of a situation plays a role in determining language choice.