Not that I believe my views are of much value or relevence, let me state more fully, I work within the two definitions: Diglossia is the existence of two (or more) forms of a language (or dialect), where one form has a higher status than the other. Register is the degree to which speech is elevated (or affected) from the colloquial to a literary standard. Two examples:
- If Lucian’s first spoken language was colloquial Ionic, and then during his studies he learnt a standard, it would be a standard form of his dialect, if however his first form of Greek was Koine and then he learnt Ionic as a purely literary language that nobody currently spoke, then for him it would be a literary standard (of a former dialect).
- If the Hippocratic Corpus had been written entirely by the man himself, then he may have been writing in his own tongue, if however later doctors added to the corpus their own linguistic background would be the determining factor as to whether they were:
- writing in their mother tongue,
- writing to a literary standard of their own dialect, or
- writing a language that bore a more distant relationship to the way they personally spoke.
Lucky you. I’d never get cast in the role. (cf. my description of Brigitte Bardot’s tan).