Managing Multilingualism in India

Book excerpt: The eighth in the series of books on language and development, this book brings out the political and linguistic dimensions of multilingualism in India. Professor Annamalai addresses three main issues: - what maintains multilingual speech communities and how this maintenance is promoted - what is progress in such communities and whom does it exclude - the impact of multilingualism on the purity norms of languages The author establishes that acquisition of multilingualism takes place through two processes. First, through formal schooling restricted to the elite, and second, through primary and secondary socialization at home and at the work place which is where majority learning takes place. He explains power relations in multilingualism by pointing out that for social purposes, code switching between languages constantly takes place for economic, social and political gains, though this does not necessarily imply that the less dominant language merges with the more dominant one. In fact, the opposite takes place for political gains. Professor Annamalai points out that the hierarchical relation between languages arises due to failure in planning, where the key actors in policy making use the provisions in the constitution for political gain, thus promoting preservation of a separate identity rather that language growth. The book finally explores the Code Use Groups, studying the grammatical neighbourhood of languages, and looks at the hexical insertion, language factor and linguistic determinants of code mixing.