Abstract:This article aims to revisit the importance of nurturing reciprocal relationships of equality and enrichment between Bangla and English in the school life of children residing in the Indian state of West Bengal. We couple the descriptor “immersion” with English and “floatation” with Bangla to serve as metaphors for language ideology. After a brief review of the language in education policy in the country and in Bengal in both colonial and post-Independence periods, we draw on conversations with schoolteachers … Show more
“…Yet, most new English-medium schools do not have board affiliation and are not thought by many to teach 13. For discussions of language medium outside of the Hindi Belt, see, for Marathi, Benei (2008); for Bengali, Majumdar and Mukhopadhyay (2018); for Kannada, Jayadeva (2018, 2019); and, for Gujarati, Ramanathan (1999Ramanathan ( , 2004Ramanathan ( , 2005.…”
Section: Advertising and Schooling: From Language Medium To Prestige mentioning
Certain combinations of languages and scripts have come to take on indexical properties within the world of advertising in northern India. Such properties are regimented by what is on offer-commercial items, government services and information, schooling, and coaching services. An exploration of changing conventions in advertising since the 1990s, a period of accelerated liberalization in India, reveals that there have been especially dramatic changes in education and coaching services. By considering combinations of language and script as partly constitutive of the voice of an institution, this article accounts for the changing possibilities for the articulation of institutional distinctions and the ways institutional voices commoditize aspects of personae during the last twenty-five years or so in northern India. A dvertising is ubiquitous in India. One encounters it painted on walls or on passing vehicles in the countryside, or higher above in smaller cities and larger urban areas. Advertisements are painted to walls themselves, or are painted or printed on cloth, wood, metal, plastic, or paper, and such materials are pasted to walls or displayed above the street on billboards or banners.
“…Yet, most new English-medium schools do not have board affiliation and are not thought by many to teach 13. For discussions of language medium outside of the Hindi Belt, see, for Marathi, Benei (2008); for Bengali, Majumdar and Mukhopadhyay (2018); for Kannada, Jayadeva (2018, 2019); and, for Gujarati, Ramanathan (1999Ramanathan ( , 2004Ramanathan ( , 2005.…”
Section: Advertising and Schooling: From Language Medium To Prestige mentioning
Certain combinations of languages and scripts have come to take on indexical properties within the world of advertising in northern India. Such properties are regimented by what is on offer-commercial items, government services and information, schooling, and coaching services. An exploration of changing conventions in advertising since the 1990s, a period of accelerated liberalization in India, reveals that there have been especially dramatic changes in education and coaching services. By considering combinations of language and script as partly constitutive of the voice of an institution, this article accounts for the changing possibilities for the articulation of institutional distinctions and the ways institutional voices commoditize aspects of personae during the last twenty-five years or so in northern India. A dvertising is ubiquitous in India. One encounters it painted on walls or on passing vehicles in the countryside, or higher above in smaller cities and larger urban areas. Advertisements are painted to walls themselves, or are painted or printed on cloth, wood, metal, plastic, or paper, and such materials are pasted to walls or displayed above the street on billboards or banners.
“…The underlying language ideology can be related to the EM educated elite's “deep immersion” in English and “mere flotation” (i.e. depthless learning) in Bangla, while for the BM educated it is “mere flotation” in English (Majumdar & Mukhopadhyay, ).…”
Section: Construction Of Elite Identitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The underlying language ideology can be related to the EM educated elite's "deep immersion" in English and Operates only locally or nationally "mere flotation" (i.e. depthless learning) in Bangla, while for the BM educated it is "mere flotation" in English (Majumdar & Mukhopadhyay, 2018). We consider Example 2 for an elaboration of the linguistic repertoire of the EM educated.…”
Section: Examplementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Although research on EMI and identity is limited at present, some researchers have illustrated how class identities and dispositions are maintained by EM schooling in South, East and Southeast Asia (David & Tien, 2009;Hamid & Jahan, 2015;LaDousa, 2014;LaDousa & Davis, 2018;Malik, 2012;Park, 2013;Ramanathan, 2005;Sandhu, 2016;Song, 2013;Sultana, 2014;Tanu, 2014). Ethnographic work in school settings has documented how language-medium ideologies have unfolded in practices of schooling and social life with different consequences for different social classes (Chidsey, 2018;Davis, 2018;LaDousa, 2014;Majumdar & Mukhopadhyay, 2018;Ramanathan, 2005;Sandhu, 2016). The present article seeks to extend this sociolinguistic work by illustrating discursive processes in elite identity construction in the changing material and political conditions in postcolonial societies such as Bangladesh.…”
Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.
“…The book joins work by a growing number of scholars, including Usree Bhattacharya (), Meghan Chidsey (), Manabi Majumdar and Rahul Mukhopadhyay (), Lavanya Murali Proctor (), Vaidehi Ramanathan (), Priti Sandhu (), Viniti Vaish (), and myself (LaDousa, ), who have argued that a middle‐class identity is not hegemonic in India, and that language varieties are hardly fixed in their resonation with social class, but rather reflect the especially complex relationships arising from a postcolonial world. Goswami reviews some of the work of the aforementioned scholars on the intersection of language and schooling in North India and concludes:in their exclusive focus on English language schooling, and fieldwork in locations which in economic terms seem to be more integrated with a national and global labour market, these studies do not account for the legitimacy processes that construct language ideologies within a vernacular language market.…”
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
