Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows
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I am puzzled by a theoretical issue. I am currently working on a sociolinguistic research on urban Ewe language as spoken in southern Togo (West Africa). Urban Ewe is a koine and as such it is the offspring of contact of rural Ewe dialects and rural Gen ( another Ewe dialect).
This urban koine is used as a lingua franca in the city and many parts of the country. However, it failed to gain any official status or be promoted as a standard variety. It is what Charles Ferguson called the Low variety in a diglossia.
Urban Ewe is a mix of very close rural dialects(phonologicaly and grammaticaly speaking). Those rural dialects have an official status since they are written, used in church or for traditional events, and even in the media. Now the problem is to find the High variety in this diglossia. Since the urban variety comes from two rural varieties, I tend to consider that we have two High varieties here. This gives us a bicephalous diglossia.
1) Have you ever heard of a similar case?
2) Since urban koines arose from the contact of different dialects can it be possible that in urban areas diglossias are always bi (or multi) cephalous? I mean with two or more High varieties?
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