Transceding Sociolinguistics: Language, Caste and Power
Transcending Sociolinguistics:
Language, Caste and Power in India
Sociolinguistics and the Language Problem in India
Though there has been a long tradition of studying and interpreting language in India, most of these studies are in descriptive, technical or structural mode. For long, language has been seen as a non-political or apolitical phenomenon and its study has remained restricted to its structure. India also has a long tradition in the study of language. However, the linguistic tradition in ancient India was exclusively concerned with what is called descriptive or synchronic linguistics.[i] It refused to see that language is not just a self-referential object and its study assumes the organic relationship it has with the society and power. R. K. Agnihotri argues that “the primary preoccupation of linguistics has been the analysis of the structural properties of language” and the “process of segmentation and classification eventually lead to postulating roots and stems that nobody uses”. Even when some efforts were made from time to time to locate language in its social context, structuralist considerations continued to dominate the enterprise.[ii] For example, American linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century remained primarily a “formal discipline”, almost along the line of abstract mathematics. Concentrating on the analysis of language structure and focusing on a corpus of sounds and smaller and larger units of meaning, the linguists studied the properties of language, as if it existed above and beyond its users. Recently, it has been well argued by the scholars of language that there exist interrelationships between language and society. Interest in the study of language in its social contexts can be traced back quite far, to the eighteen and nineteen century sociology and social philology. However, the stronger and clearer interest has come from linguists, both as a result of its more
Language, Caste and Power in India
Sociolinguistics and the Language Problem in India
Though there has been a long tradition of studying and interpreting language in India, most of these studies are in descriptive, technical or structural mode. For long, language has been seen as a non-political or apolitical phenomenon and its study has remained restricted to its structure. India also has a long tradition in the study of language. However, the linguistic tradition in ancient India was exclusively concerned with what is called descriptive or synchronic linguistics.[i] It refused to see that language is not just a self-referential object and its study assumes the organic relationship it has with the society and power. R. K. Agnihotri argues that “the primary preoccupation of linguistics has been the analysis of the structural properties of language” and the “process of segmentation and classification eventually lead to postulating roots and stems that nobody uses”. Even when some efforts were made from time to time to locate language in its social context, structuralist considerations continued to dominate the enterprise.[ii] For example, American linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century remained primarily a “formal discipline”, almost along the line of abstract mathematics. Concentrating on the analysis of language structure and focusing on a corpus of sounds and smaller and larger units of meaning, the linguists studied the properties of language, as if it existed above and beyond its users. Recently, it has been well argued by the scholars of language that there exist interrelationships between language and society. Interest in the study of language in its social contexts can be traced back quite far, to the eighteen and nineteen century sociology and social philology. However, the stronger and clearer interest has come from linguists, both as a result of its more