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In South Asia
Rakesh Mohan Bhatt
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
4:00 pm, Thursday, November 10
1418 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Comments from Vinay Dharwadker, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia
Abstract
The multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural context of South Asia presents a formidable challenge to all of those—language strategists/experts, local, state, and federal policy makers—who are invested in the politics of managing linguistic diversity. In South Asia, language policies, past and present, have had to deal with on the one hand the hierarchical regimes of languages (sacred/vernacular, colonial/indigenous, global/local), and, on the other, repairing historical injustices (e.g., of colonization) by addressing the linguistic rights of all the “vernaculars” spoken in different regions. Focusing mainly on India and Pakistan, and discussing particular case-studies, I will outline the language policies that have been adopted during and after the colonial period and discuss the implications of these policies for pedagogical practices that have been recruited to accommodate the cultural and linguistic diversity of South Asia.
This series is free and open to the public. It is made possible with generous support from the UW-Madison College of Letters and Science Anonymous Fund.
For more information, contact Dianna Murphy at (608) 262-1575, diannamurphy@wisc.edu. |
