Language and society in South Asia

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.

Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics. Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 59–82

Long-standing ideas about the "linguistic cycle" hold that languages naturally shift from analytic to synthetic morphological patterns and then from synthetic back to analytic in a long-term cyclic pattern. But the demonstrable history of actual languages shows dramatic differences in their tendencies to shift in either direction, and there are well-known examples of language families which preserve complexity or analyticity over millennia. We see the same thing within Tibeto-Burman, where some branches are highly synthetic and others analytic. Examining the history of a representative language from each of two TB branches in Northeast India, analytic Boro (Boro-Garo) and synthetic Lai (Kuki-Chin), suggests a possible sociolinguistic explanation for these tendencies. Trudgill and others have suggested that the tendency to develop and maintain strongly analytic grammatical patterns is associated with "exoteric" languages spoken by large populations, and regularly used to communicate with outsiders, while the development and maintenance of morphological complexity is characteristic of "esoteric" languages spoken by small communities and used only to communicate with other native speakers. This paper presents Boro-Garo and Kuki-Chin as exemplifying these tendencies.

This volume of 26 articles provides a wealth of information about language on the Indian Subcontinent, one of the densest and most complex language areas in the world, within whose seven political divisions are spoken varieties representing Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and the Munda subdivision of the Astro-Asiatic taxon, along with several contact languages, by one and a half billion people, about 25% of the world population, in a great ancient Sprachbund. The sheer linguistic variability of the region is staggering. The 1961 census counted the Mother Tongues of India at more than 1,600, although R.E. Asher ("Language in Historical Context," 31 -48) puts the number of languages at closer to 300. The usual difficulties of classification apply, given that in many cases a language name is a cover term for a set of varieties. South Asia's reputation as a Sprachbund, first suggested by Murray Emeneau in 1956 (India as a Linguistic Area in Language and Linguistic Areas: Essays. Stanford: Stanford University Press,1980), is well justified, as over several millennia major and minor representatives of the aforementioned language taxa have coexisted, diffused, and converged. K.V. Subbarao, in "Typological Characteristics of South Asian Languages" (49 -78) makes a survey of typological features shared by important representatives of the languages in South Asia,

Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia, 2024

This introduction sets some keynotes for the edited volume of which it is a part. It briefly surveys the modern South Asian language situation and calibrates our take on language ideologies.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Routledge. Authors are responsible for all contents in their articles including accuracy of the facts, statements, and citations.

1999

As is well known, South Asia is home both to a vast number of different languages and dialects (belonging to at least four different language families 1) and to extensive regional and cross-regional bi-and multilingual interactions between various combinations of these languages. This highly diverse and complex linguistic picture is paralleled by a similarly diverse and complex ethnic panorama. The relationship between the linguistic and ethnic scenes, in turn, rather than being one-to-one, is likewise of a highly complex nature. Breton's Atlas attempts to map the resulting complex panorama, with focus on the linguistic side, and drawing mainly on data provided by the censuses which have been conducted every ten years since 1881. Among these censuses, the 1961 census furnishes the foundation for most of Breton's presentation. Part I is devoted to a 'General presentation of the languages and ethnic communities of South Asia'. Chapter 1 (16-20) deals with 'India as an exemplary laboratory for the coexistence of languages and ethnic communities'; Chapter 2 (21-39) is concerned with 'Language compared to other ethnic traits', including 'race', tribe, and caste. Chapter 3 (40-42), bearing the somewhat mysterious title 'From language dynamics to linguism', is especially concerned with the politics of language and the creation in India of 'linguistic states', i.e. of states defined not in terms of the political situation in colonial and precolonial South Asia, but on the basis of majority languages. (This is the development that the term iinguism' apparently refers to.) Part II (43-189) is entitled 'The sixty plates with commentaries'. Different geographical plates (or more accurately, maps) and accompanying mini-chapters are devoted to 'The languages of India' (Plate 1), 'Indian languages and scripts in the world' (Plate 2), 'Official languages' (Plate 3), different geographical regions (Plates 4-36), 'Non-regional languages', including Sanskrit (Plate 37), English (Plate 38), and (other) non-Indian languages (Plate 39), 'The linguistic states, the media, and the metropolitan situations' (Plates 40-44), 'Ethno-linguistic issues throughout the subcontinent and around', including plurilingual states elsewhere in the world (Plates 45-50), and 'The linguistic situation up to the 1991 census' (Plates 51-60).

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.

Journal of Pragmatics, 1998