SOCIOLINGUISTIC CULTURE

In the multilingual, multi-ethnic countries like India, the need for sociolinguistics can hardly be underestimated. Language variations in social and regional axes, through mutual isolation and interaction constantly reshape individual and social identities, which in turn have their impact on the environment of planning. Moreover, language use in education, administration and mass communication can fundamentally alter the character of the polity and thus influence the orientation and affect the foundation of planning itself. Sociolinguistics and the role of linguists in developing countries has to be viewed in this perspective.

Two hundred years of imperialist rule resulted in the creation of an elitist society in India where less than 4 per cent of the population enjoy the rank, status and wealth bestowed by English education. The large majority of people were alienated from the ruling group by the use of a language in administration which was nor accessible to them. Since audience in India is divided by language use, the use of English as the major language of mass media alienated the large majority of people from those privileged rulers, whether they were aliens or their countrymen. Thus the foundation of a society governed by the elites for their benefit in the name of the masses was complete.

The thirty years after independence have seen a different kind of isolation and fragmentation. In spite of lip service to Indian languages, English education is still very much the preferred education. Wherever Indian languages have been adopted as languages of education and languages of administration, without proper linkages at different levels and stages, small islands have been created, separating dialects from languages and one languages from another. Even within a single language the use of middle class language as the standard has left many, whose languages are different, disadvantages. The mass media which swears by the spoken word, uses it for the entertainments of non-users of these languages. No serious effort is made to make the Indian languages vehicles of knowledge, to define the domains of various languages and dialects and to use these with a view to ensuring people-oriented multilingual planning.

Under such circumstances, the role of a practitioner of sociolinguistics can only be that of a catalyst and a rebel. It is strange but true that all new revolutions are quickly adopted by the people in positions of power and translated into new slogans. These slogans provide them the necessary cloack to go about their work in the age old manner for their own purpose. Thus, those who were in charge of education for the last two or three decades and are responsible for establishing and nurturing the formal educational structure leading to an elitist society, suddenly have become votaries of non-formal and mass education. Mass education demands instant communication of knowledge to the masses. The masses of people being identified in groups in terms of language use, a rational policy decision must be implemented linking the twin problems of instant communication and the process of standardization and modernization in the country. Whether it is learning to be, writing a pedagogy of the oppressed or establishing deschooling society, the planning orientation cries for a distinctive change and a linguist committed to his/her profession is called upon to provide the leadership.

At a time when learners coming from families where there was no formal education for generations is pointed out to be the reason for falling standards, when leaning to write a petition for supplying clean drinking water, improved seeds and fertilizers and a homestead for those who have none is considered indulging in antisocial if not antinational activities, their is no wonder that a sociolinguist has to fight his lone battle. He is to raise his voice against the forces both inside and outside who are bent upon sabotaging from within the proposals put forward by the leadership. The linguist must expose this combine and help the radicalisation of education. Father Ferer called true education as subversive. It is subversive of the vested interest, of the elitist structure and a restrictive society. True education must ensure total freedom and equality of opportunity to all sectors of people as regards the accessibility to knowledge is concerned. It must ensure putting that knowledge to use for improving the quality of individual as well as corporate life.

The linguists in the country, however, are neither prepared no preparing themselves for such a role. Inter-disciplinary subjects such as sociolinguistics, psycho-linguistics are not fields for incompetent linguists, sociologists and psychologists. In fact a lot of what goes under the name sociolinguistics is nothing but linguistics. If sociolinguistics is pursued merely as a fashion in the same manner as the generative transformational linguistics, then in spite of all the good will it is bound to fail to deliver the goods. I would, therefore, urge universities and institutions in the country to train their people well before making claims to achievements in the areas of applied linguistics in general and sociolinguistics in particular.

A good example of how our training lacks relevance to the Indian context may be seen from issues like the three-language formula, adult education and primary education. It is sad to see that even Ph.D.s in Indian languages and linguistics are not fully conversant with the import of the three-language formula. The three-language formula does not set up an upper limit to language learning. It is a consensus which highlights the need to blend the local, the national and the international and seeks to promote a culturally integrative policy. It is a lunching pad for the exploration to the micro, mezzo and macro dimensions of language use and cultural synthesis.

It needs a linguist to delineate the methods, materials and the media for teaching mother tongue, second language and the foreign language. But our children, who even today are asked to study mother tongue English and the mother tongue as a mirror image of second language English do not have even the vaguest idea of such distinctions. Fed with ancient and medieval literature taught in a perfunctory manner and starved of functional conceptual prose, the children in schools and colleges fail to manipulate their mother tongue for expressing themselves in any field of study. For language and linguistic scholars are aware of the ramifications of such a situation.

The deficiency at the higher stages is the cumulative effect of bad language teaching at earlier stages. It must be admitted that without proper understanding of the problems relating to language use neither the problems of primary education nor adult literacy can be solved. India has 400 million adult literates accounting for 50 per cent of the total world illiterate population. But this problem cannot be solved unless primary education is universalised and stagnation and wastage is plugged. With 70 per cent drop out, stagnation by the end of the 5th standard, the primary education is the greatest contributor to adult illiteracy.

If one critically examines the cause of drop out and stagnation, difference between the home language and school language and lack of an academic strategey to move from one to the other in a smooth way loom large as causes. Yet neither the planners, the teacher educators nor the teachers have thought it fit to tackle the problem. Some of them, in their bind allegiance to English and in the mistaken notion that a language is better taught if it is taught for a longer duration have even pleaded for primary education through English. These pseudo-educators forget that in the absence of trained teachers, improved techniques of teaching and scientifically graded textual materials, if a language is merely taught for a longer duration it will create more learning problems than solving them. In States like Karnataka and A.P. where there are approximately 2500 secondary schools and 40,000 primary schools each, introduction of English below the 5th standard (and say from the 3rd standard) will require training of almost one lakh teachers in each case for which there is neither expertise no resources in the country. Whether it is mother tongue, second language or foreign language instruction when the simple differences among teaching a language, teaching about a language and teaching through a language have not percolated even to the level of teacher educators, one can imagine the colossal challenges confronting a linguist. Thus, whether it is teaching language as a subject, teaching subjects through a language, designing a bilingual curriculum for, those whose home language is different from the school language or designing improved methods and materials for teachers and teacher educators, there is greatest need for trained linguists with Indian orientation and social commitment. Our universities and training institutions must go beyond teaching the meta-language of the disciplines concerned and inculcate a problem solving orientation in the students. A healthy partnership between universities and institutes engaged in research and textbook production, located in close proximity to Centres of Linguistic Research shall take the leadership in this direction, so that a community of scholarship by bringing together leading practitioners in the field of sociolinguistics can be created to meet the colossal challenges before us.