<div dir="ltr">
<header><h1> Five Questions </h1> <div class="gmail-postmeta"> <div class="gmail-meta-date"> March 05, 2018 </div> <div class="gmail-share-post"> SHARE : <a class="gmail-custom-soc gmail-icon-text" rel="nofollow"><i class="gmail-fa gmail-fa-facebook"></i></a> <a href="https://plus.google.com/share?url=https://nation.com.pk/05-Mar-2018/five-questions" target="_blank" class="gmail-custom-soc gmail-icon-text"><i class="gmail-fa gmail-fa-google-plus"></i></a> <a href="https://twitter.com/share?url=https://nation.com.pk/05-Mar-2018/five-questions" target="_blank" class="gmail-custom-soc gmail-icon-text"><i class="gmail-fa gmail-fa-twitter"></i></a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://nation.com.pk/05-Mar-2018/five-questions&title= Five Questions" target="_blank" title="Five Questions"><i class="gmail-fa gmail-fa-linkedin"></i></a> <div class="gmail-fb-save gmail-fb_iframe_widget"><span style="vertical-align:bottom;width:150px;height:28px"></span></div> </div> </div> </header> <article> <div class="gmail-imgpost"> <div> <span> <img src="https://nation.com.pk/print_images/medium/2018-03-05/five-questions-1520199717-1533.jpg" class="gmail-img-responsive gmail-detailpage-single-img" alt="Five Questions" width="750" height="400"> </span> </div> </div> <div class="gmail-banner8 gmail-header-banner"> <div id="gmail-div-gpt-ad-1414124712057-6" style="padding-top:5px"> <div id="gmail-google_ads_iframe_/1002138/Nation_AP_BTF_728x90_0__container__" style="border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:0pt;display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px"></div></div> </div> <div class="gmail-post-authorthumb"> <a href="https://nation.com.pk/Reporter/zoya-nazir"> <div style="height:110px;background:rgba(0,0,0,0) url("https://nation.com.pk/assets/thenation/images/no-image-author-small.jpg") repeat scroll 0% 0%" class="gmail-img_bckg"></div> </a> <h5><a href="https://nation.com.pk/Reporter/zoya-nazir">zoya nazir</a></h5> <div> <div> </div> </div> <div id="gmail-floater"> <div id="gmail-sharebar" class="gmail-fixed"> <div style="padding:10px 0px 10px 15px"> <div class="gmail-fb-like gmail-fb_iframe_widget"><span style="vertical-align:bottom;width:52px;height:64px"></span></div> </div> <div style="padding:5px 0px 10px 13px"> </div> <div style="padding:5px 0px 10px 13px"> <span size="tall"></span> </div> <div style="padding:5px 0px 10px 10px"> <span style="line-height:1;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block;text-align:center" class="gmail-IN-widget"><span style="padding:0px;margin:0px;text-indent:0px;display:inline-block;vertical-align:baseline;font-size:1px"><span id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0"><a id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0-link"><span id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0-logo">in</span><span id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0-title"><span id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0-mark"></span><span id="gmail-li_ui_li_gen_1520262735874_0-title-text">Share</span></span></a></span></span></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gmail-post-content"> <p style="text-align:justify"></p><p style="text-align:justify"></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Islamabad
- Tariq Rahman is an academic scholar, writer and a well-cited
linguist in Pakistan. Holding degrees in literature and linguistics, he
has authored many books including A History of Pakistani Literature in
English, Language and Politics in Pakistan, An Introduction to
Linguistics, Language, Ideology and Power. He is the recipient of
several national and international awards recognising his research and
vast scholarship. His most recent book is From Hindi to Urdu: A Social
and Political History published in 2011. Tariq Rahman is currently the
dean of the School of Education at the Beaconhouse National
University in Lahore. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> Q1) Your
life has an interesting trajectory; you joined the army, left it,
studied literature and then eventually switched to linguistics? What
prompted you to change your fields?</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> When
I joined the army I was very young and didn’t know anything about
politics. I wasn’t interested in it either. When military action took
place in Bangladesh, I was about to be passed out as an officer and
heard senior colleagues from East Pakistan describing the atrocities on
ground. The stories of mass murders, systematic rapes, and burning of
villages, traumatized me. For them, it was suppression of those who
betrayed the state whereas for me it was the suppression of East
Pakistanis by military action rather than votes. I decided that I
couldn’t obey orders to fight a war, which my conscience declares wrong.
That is when I resigned from the army even though I had prospects of
rising to higher ranks. I wanted to study further. Eventually, I did an
MA in English, and then another two in political science, all three as
private candidates.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Q2) Do you think linguistics is more important to understand than literature?</p> <p style="text-align:justify">I
think both are equally important. After leaving the army, I wanted to
do a degree that could combine literature with social sciences. With
social sciences, I felt you could write about the changing attitudes of
war. Social science is important in terms of bringing attitudinal
changes. Now, the British council scholarship at that time (1979) was
only offered for literature. In 1980, I applied to a number of
universities but my preference was University of Sheffield, which
offered British history and literature. By undertaking this degree, I
could write about the military. When I finished my MA in literature, in
1982, my class fellows had applied for PhD programs. With encouragement
from my wife, I too decided to apply for a PhD. I then got a doctorate
degree in 1985, which focused on E M Forster’s aspects of an English
language novel. I came back to Pakistan and in a year’s time, my
interest changed to the history of English language and then to
linguistics. Then I applied for another Masters because I wanted to
write a book called ‘language and politics’. For this, I went to Glasgow
because Scottish universities were teaching linguistics.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">My
studies brought me to the nature of conflict in Pakistan, class of
worldview and ideologies and, in general, things which are precious to
me in a country, we all live in.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Q3) What is the current state of linguistics education in Pakistan?</p> <p style="text-align:justify">It
has improved since the time I came. There are a number of Masters and
MPhil classes in various universities but no institute teaches
linguistics at Bachelor’s level. That is unfortunate because students
come for an MPhil degree without any real grounding of how the language
works. I founded the linguistics department at Quaid-e-Azam University,
which offers MA in the subject but then again, without any previous
knowledge of language, students can’t take much from this degree. So
while neighboring countries like India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, offer
linguistic courses at Bachelor’s level, the field remains unfamiliar and
unexplored in Pakistan.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Q4) How do you think languages such as Urdu and English are being used as tools of power at the cost of local languages?</p> <p style="text-align:justify">There
are domains of power such as democracy, judiciary, media and business
houses. Whichever is the language of these will give people jobs.
English is primary language since British times followed by Urdu. To
flourish in the job market, it is important to know these
languages. This is true for India too. India has a 3-language policy on
paper but jobs are still only in English and Hindi. This is a
sub-continental reality, which is more pronounced in Pakistan.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">There
are a total of 72 regional languages in Pakistan, but their importance
is being increasingly marginalized. Punjabi, despite having 60 million
speakers, is not taught in schools whereas Pashto is taught only till
class 5 in Balochistan. Sindhi is taught till higher grades but only in
rural Sindh. Our languages are the beauty of Pakistan and it is tragic
that there have been no measures to safeguard them.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Q5)
Although many people don’t approve of ‘Urdish’, the use of Urdu and
English together in utterances and written sentences, giving the logic
that one should use only one language at a time, you argue in favour of
such usage. Why?</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> Purists have
always been against change. Whenever two languages come together, there
has always been, what we call, code-switching. That is the technical
term for such usage. It has also been called high literature at some
point. The common saying these days is that ‘Kids don’t know any
language. Neither Urdu nor English’. This is complete nonsense because
there are, in my opinion, many reasons to switch during the
conversation. If one wants to express intimacy or convey particular
thoughts or ideas which one feels can only be conveyed effectively in a
certain language, they switch. It is simply false to say that bilingual
or multilingual speakers don’t have command over any one language. In
ordinary conversations, speakers of more than one language will always
alternate between them to facilitate the conversation.</p></div></article>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>