In many communities, not one language is spoken, but several. In these communities bilingualism is the norm, ralher than the exception. The functioning of the two languages requires a particular set of norms for the speakers, and a functional specialiaation ofthe languages involved. Nare that here, as e1sewhere, we are talking about two languages, but in many situations more than twc languages are involved. Ta get an idea of the compiexity of the problem, take a sirnation such as Mauritius (Moorghen and Domingue, 1982). On an island with less than a million inhabitants, over 10 languages have sizable groups ofspeakers. Most of these are associated with particular ethruc groups, often descendants of migrants from South Asia, and in addition there is the coloniallanguage, French (to some extent sharing this statuswith English]. In between there is Creole, which on the one hand is rhe ethnic language ofa particular group, termed General Popelation by Moorghen and Domingue, and on the other hand functions as a lingua franca. Thus a businessman with Bhojpuri ethnic background may use English on the teiephone when dealing with a large company, French when negotiating a building permit with a government official, joke with his colleagues in Creole, and then go home to speak Hindi with bis wife and both Hindi and Creole with his children: Creole when making jokes, Hindi when telling them to do their homework.

We can approach the divisicn of labour ofthe two languages involved, and hence the problem of choosing between the Ianguages, from a number of different perspectives, which can be schematically presenred as in Table 3.1:

We will now go on to discuss these different perspectives in turn, illustraung each of rhem with a characteristic example from a bilingual society. The first two perspectives, formulated in terms ofthe concepts of domains and diglossia, could be considered deterrninietic: the emphasis lies on a set of given societal norms rather than on rhe ways speakers construct, interpret and actively transform social reality. They will be dealt with in the first sectien. The second two perspeenvee ﹛discussed in section 3.2) take the individual as their Point of departure, and the fifth perspective, finally, artempts a more general, integrative Point of view, in terms ofthe functions thar a given language has.