ABSTRACT
One way of looking at language use in society is to see it in terms of making choices. Human communication entails selecting from the linguistic and stylistic items available, i.e. favouring some and rejecting others. This choice can be made consciously or unconsciously. Whereas monolinguals will choose according to the conventions of the members of their speech community and their own idiosyncratic preferences, the speakers of diglossic communities will have additional choices to make, as they must also decide whether the High or the Low variety should be employed. Similarly, members of bilingual or multilingual societies are faced with wider choices in their language use. In Part I (particularly Chapters 4 and 5) the bilingual individual’s language use was examined with a view to finding some answers as to when, why and how Language A, or Language B, or a mixture of both, is used.
