Voices of Self-surrender: Religious Multilingualism in Medieval South India

1981

This work attempts to provide an overview of liuguistic diversity in South Asia and to place this diversity in a cultural context. The work tries to describe the current state of knowledge concerning socially conditioned language variation in the subcontinent. Each of five major language families contains numerous mutually intelligible and unintelligible dialects. Different dialects of a language may be required for 'written and spoken use and for different social groups. Bilingualism and multilingualism are common for communication between groups. Language choice is important for education, politics, radio and television. Chapter 2 of this book enumerates criteria used in the taxonomy of language forms, discussing a number of theories of dialect formation from the points of view of linguistic innovation and diffusion of linguistic change. Chapter 3 surveys literature on classification of South Asian languages. Chapter 4 considers South Asia as a distinct linguistic area and Chapter 5 evaluates literature on South Asian social dialects. Chapter 6 examines linguistic codes encompassing elements from more than one autonomous language. Chapter 7 considers the ways in which the lexicon of South Asian languages and dialects contain elements that structure themselves into concrete systems. (CHK)

Language and the Making of Modern India, 2020

I have carried the early versions of this book with me as I have moved across the world and made my home in many different localities. And through these journeys, this book has been fed by numerous conversations and friendships. The book began its life as a PhD dissertation at the University of Minnesota. Under Ajay Skaria's guidance, an incredible mix of kindness and intellectual challenge, I learned to hone in on my central conceptual concerns for this project. Simona Sawhney's generous mentorship pushed me to find my academic voice. Her insightful yet cryptic questions have often shown me the promise of my own work when I failed to see it myself. I am also indebted to the

International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 2020

In this essay, we reconsider the topic of "Linguistic Diversity in South Asia"-the title of the landmark 1960 volume edited by Charles Ferguson and John Gumperz-from the perspective of contemporary sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Reviewing a number of case studies, we argue that empirical and theoretical accounts of language, diversity, and South Asia cannot be disassociated from the ideologies and political projects that construe, objectify, and performatively realize such terms and their referents. At the same time, however, contemporary linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics have not disposed of the questions that animated earlier generations' investigations into linguistic diversity in the subcontinent but have reinvigorated and transformed them in sophisticated ways that are empirically sensitive to the realities of social and linguistic life in all its complex reflexivity.

This paper attempts to explore an ecological understanding of the loss of language in a multilingual country such as India. India is abundantly blessed with linguistic diversity. Tribal, minorities', and non-schedule languages can significantly contribute to the development of linguistic diversity of this country. Linguistic pluralities and ideologies intrinsically exist in various forms of sociolinguistic narratives of our societies. These narratives happen to be the primary representations of subaltern groups and also marginalized communities of this country. In this paper, we point out linguistic diversities and ideologies in 'commonsense' beliefs, political and sociocultural orientations. However, there is a cultural and linguistic loss that always takes place in the process of linguistic globalization and imperialism. Language Politics in India During colonialism, several language planning and policies emerged, and all of them could be considered as against Indian expectations and experiences. Current debates upon various aspects of language endangerment across India and elsewhere are directly connected to language politics. Language politics predominantly goes hand in hand with the elite classes and castes of this country. These particular classes and caste groups do not own (and have not owned) a specific language through generations. Further, no particular language is part of their sociolinguistic identity across intergeneration. As and when a language emerges as the dominant one, it becomes the language of these elite classes and caste groups. In the contexts of Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English languages, this perception can be realized and observed. Historical evidences substantiate the way in which linguistic manipulations have taken place. Thus, this paper assesses many different aspects of linguistic globalization that are an exemplary case of issues and controversies surrounding linguistic globalization and particularly language politics in India.

International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2001

The paper raises a few old debates in the ®eld of language development, such as the one between a``free'' versus a``monitored'' policy, treading of à`k nown'' or a``novel'' path of progression, or the cost and consequences of a decision to develop a writing system, or the sociopolitical factors that may contribute to such multilinguality or multiscriptality. It suggests that so far wrong questions have been raised, viz. whether one is talking about a language or a dialect, or whether the variety of speech has a script, or, say, could it have its own grammar, etc. In raising such questions, one overlooks the fact that both in the developed western communities and in South Asia, dierent languages employ the same or similar writing systems and yet remain dierent. The study discusses a few actual cases of plurality and multiscriptality in South Asia and the problems arising out of plurality of scripts. It is argued here that in civil societies, all linguistically minority communities have the right to develop their own languages and choose or create their own writing systems.

Critical Quarterly, 2010

Living Together Separately. Cultural India in History and Politics, Mushirul HASAN & Asim ROY (Ed.) 75-116, 2006

The study aims at enliightening the history of the language conflicts in South Asia, starting with the language classification in the 19th century, particularly the role that their politisation have played in colonial South Asia and still play in independant India in conjunction with the politisation of religious "communalism".