Original scientific paper
SOCIOLINGUISTIC ECOLOGY IN INDIA: LANGUAGE POLICY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY
Marijana Janjić
orcid.org/0000-0002-2296-7904
Abstract
Contemporary India is a heterogeneous multilingual state in which the languages of various language families are present. The Constitution of the Republic India and other documents regulate the use of languages in particular spheres of public communication. Yet the same documents do not create an egalitarian environment for the use of all languages in public communication. The paper summarizes how explicit language policy (regulations) reflect linguistic diversity and language hierarchy in India by appointing official languages in administration and legislative bodies and introducing a three-way formula into education. Comparative analysis of documents and language statistics from Census 2001 tries to reveal possible oversights. In the example of English and Hindi the paper concludes that the sociolinguistic pattern of power deployment and language hierarchy is inherited from the time before India was established as a republic.
Keywords
India; language policy; official languages; education; inherited sociolinguistic pattern
Hrčak ID:
193102
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2017.
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