Sociolinguistics Research In India
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Sociolinguistic research in India is the study of how the Indian society affects and is affected by the languages of the country. India is a highly multilingual nation, where many languages are spoken and also studied, both as part of linguistics and with the aim of aiding community development. Though theoretical and
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
have a long history in the country (dating back to perhaps the first millennium BCE), few researchers have concentrated on the sociolinguistic situation of India.


Context

India is a particularly challenging and rewarding country in which to conduct sociolinguistic research due to the large number of languages spoken in the country (415 are listed in the SIL Ethnologue).


History of sociolinguistic research

Variation between Indian languages has been noted for millennia: by Tolkāppiyar (Tamil) in his " Tolkāppiyam"(5 BCE); Yaska in his ''Nirutka'' (500 BCE);
Patanjali Patanjali ( sa, पतञ्जलि, Patañjali), also called Gonardiya or Gonikaputra, was a Hindu author, mystic and philosopher. Very little is known about him, and while no one knows exactly when he lived; from analysis of his works it i ...
(200 BCE); Bharata in his ''Natyasastra'' (500 CE);and
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, also known as Abul sharma, Abu'l Fadl and Abu'l-Fadl 'Allami (14 January 1551 – 22 August 1602), was the grand vizier of the Mughal emperor Akbar, from his appointment in 1579 until his death in 1602. He was the au ...
in his ''
Ain-e-Akbari The ''Ain-i-Akbari'' ( fa, ) or the "Administration of Akbar", is a 16th-century detailed document recording the administration of the Mughal Empire under Emperor Akbar, written by his court historian, Abu'l Fazl in the Persian language. It for ...
'' (16th century). The classification of languages, particularly with regard to regional differences and to so-called 'hybrid' languages, continued to progress during the 19th century. From 1881, language information was explicitly sought in the census, which found a total of 162 languages in the country (116 Indian languages and 46 foreign languages). Questions about language continued to be included in the 10-yearly census in the following years, and in 1896
George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...
began his ''Language Survey of India'', in which he tried to classify Indian languages based on the distribution of morpho-phonemic differences.
Jules Bloch Jules Bloch (May 1, 1880 in Paris – November 29, 1953) was a French linguist who studied Indian languages, and was also interested in languages in their cultural and social contexts. Doctor of Letters in 1914, he was director of studies at the ...
published a study on caste dialects in 1910, however this was not followed up for some decades. Early Indian research into sociolinguistics can be said to have begun in the early 1960s. Charles A. Ferguson published ''Diglossia'' (1959) on variation as a developmental and functional phenomenon of language, while John J. Gumperz published on the linguistic aspects of caste differentiation in 1960. Both topics were quickly picked up by Indian linguists. In the mid-1960s, William Labov added an interest in variation within the speech of a caste. A seminar on "Language and Society in India" was held in 1967 and in 1969 the Central Institute of Indian Languages was founded, which had a particular success into drawing young linguists into applied studies. In 1972 the University of Delhi introduced the first sociolinguistics course. Almost a hundred years after Grierson's survey, the International Centre for Research on Bilingualism completed its sociolinguistic ''Survey of India'' (1983-86), covering 50 major and minor languages in the country. Originally it had been intended to cover all the written languages except Sanskrit and English, but not enough data were collected for the other 47 languages reviewed.


Fields of research


Caste dialects

Following Bloch's 1910 work on caste dialects, further studies were carried out in the 1960s by (among others) William McCormack, in an attempt to discover the origin and method of transmission of caste dialects, and by A. K. Ramanujan, comparing the kinds of language innovation between Brahmin and non-Brahmin dialects of Tamil. Researchers have studied both the degree of association between caste distinctions and linguistic differences, and the methods and reasons for maintaining these differences.


Diglossia and Code switching

Ferguson (1959) first used the term " diglossia", whereby languages exhibit two or more distinct styles of speech in different contexts, and a number of studies looked into the phenomenon in more depth. Much of this research was focused on Tamil, but diglossia in Sinhalese and in Telugu was also studied. Shanmugam Pillai attempted to analyse code switching among Kanyakumari fishermen (1968) with regard to the hierarchy of the caste structure. Other research into code switching has studied it in the context of minority-majority interactions, urban and tribal transactions, and other special settings.


Language planning

With help from the Central Institute of Indian Languages, language planning became a subject in Indian linguistic courses. Institutes in Language Planning were held in 1977, 1980 and 1987, and the ''New Language Planning Newsletter'' began in 1985.


Others

Other social variables have also been studied, such as urbanness and education; informal friendship contacts; and occupation and residence. There has also been pioneering work on the linguistic landscape of India.Itagi, N. H. and S. K. Singh. 2002. ''Linguistic Landscaping in India with Particular Reference to the New States''. Proceedings of a seminar, Central Institute of Indian Languages and Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University.


Important researchers

Besides those already mentioned, the following researchers have been instrumental in the development of Indian sociolinguistics: * William Bright who, along with A. K. Ramanujan, wrote early work on phonetic and phonemic innovation in Brahman and non-Brahman dialects. Bright also wrote on semantic structural differences among speakers. * Murray Barnson Emeneau, who had written the classic paper '' India as a Linguistic Area'', also wrote on ritual language and ritual culture. * Prabodh Bechardas Pandit focused on sociolinguistic aspects of convergence and language shift.


Contribution of sociolinguistics to Indian society

Sociolinguistic research has contributed to language in education, administration, and codification efforts of language standardisation.


See also

* Dravidian studies * Languages of India *
Caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...


References

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External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20070205033818/http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/socioling/ *http://www.languageinindia.com/may2005/jennifermissinglinks1.html *http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book220703&currTree=Subjects&level1=400 *https://web.archive.org/web/20070207030018/http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/socioling/index.html *http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1360-6441&site=1 *http://www.sil.org/sociolx/ Sociolinguistics Languages of India Linguistic research in India