LINGUISTIC IDENTITY IN AN INVADED LAND

Abstract

Chhotanagpur Adivasi regions of India coincide with the natural resource regions. With setting up of first Iron-steel plant and associated coal mining, the Chhotanagpur region got exposure to the world of industrialization in India. People from outside also came owing to available agricultural land, providing specialized services (ritualistic) and charity services to the early settlers. These factors in combination resulted in interaction of the region with the outside world. The present paper attempts to map the processes of making and unmaking of such multilingual environ that is based on intermingling and interactions across groups of speakers, promoters, and researchers with different levels of power at their disposal. . The work is rooted in the framework (Bucholtz and Hall 2005) that takes identity as produced in linguistic interaction, based on the following principles: (1) identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore is a social and cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon; (2) identities are relationally constructed through several, often overlapping, aspects of the relationship between self and other, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/ delegitimacy.