29.581, Review: Kashmiri; Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; Discourse Analysis; Psycholing; Socioling: Bhat (2017)

Fri Feb 2 21:13:00 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-581. Fri Feb 02 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.581, Review: Kashmiri; Anthropological Ling; Cog Sci; Discourse Analysis; Psycholing; Socioling: Bhat (2017)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clare at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:12:56
From: Kelsey Harper [kelsey.harper at tamu.edu]
Subject: The Changing Language Roles and Linguistic Identities of the Kashmiri Speech Community

Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36318637

Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-1962.html

AUTHOR: M. Ashraf  Bhat
TITLE: The Changing Language Roles and Linguistic Identities of the Kashmiri Speech Community
PUBLISHER: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Kelsey Elizabeth Harper, Texas A&M University

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry 

SUMMARY 

Dr. M. Ashraf Bhat received his PhD from the Department of Humanities at IIT
Kanpur, India, and later completed a postdoctorate from the Department of
Social Sciences at IIT, Delhi, India. He is a member of the editorial board of
the “American Journal of Linguistics,” the “American Journal of Educational
Research,” and has authored various publications, including “Language: The
Ultimate Tool of Social Control.” His research centers on cognitive
linguistics, cyber-linguistics, conflict discourses, language attrition, and
linguistic identity. The present work, “The Changing Language Roles and
Linguistic Identities of the Kashmiri Speech Community” focuses on language
attrition and identity among Kashmiri speakers in India.

Bhat contributes uniquely to current literature on linguistic identity through
establishing a link between language contact, shift, attrition and identity in
Kashmir, an area that has long been the center of sociopolitical and
territorial disputes between India and Pakistan. While existing studies
investigate different aspects of the Kashmiri speech community (Bhatt, 1989;
Kachru, 1969), none have focused specifically on change and attrition in the
Kashmiri language as has Bhat in his study of Kashmiri speakers. Moreover,
existing studies on attrition focus on immigrant communities, not on changes
within a speech community in its own homeland. This is the unique case in the
Kashmiri speech community.

The present study investigates the multilingual context of the Kashmiri speech
community through an emphasis on changing language roles and linguistic
practices within this underrepresented community. It assesses these changing
linguistic roles and practices, and examines the creation and maintenance of
new linguistic identities. The study pinpoints both macro level factors
(contexts of acquisition and usage, historical, cultural and socioeconomic
factors) and micro level factors (social class, gender, attitudes and
motivation) that trigger changes in the use of the Kashmiri language itself
and in the attitudes of its speakers. In addition, the book elaborates on the
impact of the shift in Kashmiri linguistic identity. Overall, Bhat provides a
comprehensive and multifaceted account of language shift in the Kashmiri
speech community through examining a variety of factors, including linguistic
and functional perspectives, language preferences, attrition and linguistic
identity.  

The book is organized into six chapters, each one focusing on a different
aspect of Kashmir and its people and languages. From its history to the
linguistic attitudes of Kashmiri speakers, the author demonstrates an in-depth
understanding of the inner workings of this particular speech community.
Through attention-grabbing anecdotes, the book’s preface situates the subject
matter within the context of the author’s own experiences as a Kashmiri
speaker. Through these real-life examples, the reader begins to understand the
status of Kashmiri in India and how its speakers are denigrated as “illiterate
villagers” by those outside of their speech community (Bhatt, 2017, p. xv).
Such labels have caused Kashmiri speakers to reject their native language. In
sum, the preface provides a vivid account of how language and identity are
inseparable.

Bhat includes a strong bibliography in his first chapter, synthesizing the
works of Sapir, Whorf, Labov, Gumperz, and other prominent research on
language and identity. His incorporation of foundational works on linguistic
identity sets the stage well for his own study of the Kashmiri speech
community. Chapter two provides a linguistic perspective on Kashmiri by
delving into the history of the language and its five regional varieties. It
also discusses digraphia in Kashmiri and the political, cultural and religious
factors that led to a disunified writing system. Overall, the second chapter
provides background information on the position of Kashmiri in Indian society;
it is the only state in India where a non-native language, Urdu, has been made
the state’s official language. In a similar fashion to chapter two, chapter
three provides a functional perspective on the changing linguistic practices
in Kashmir. It discusses the hegemony of Urdu as it gradually replaces
Kashmiri in several aspects of daily life, including education, communication
with peer groups, and even involuntary operations such as thinking and
dreaming. This social dominance of Urdu is an important point made in this
chapter and explains by and large why Kashmiri as a language and culture is in
a state of decline.

Chapters four and five turn away from linguistic and functional perspectives
and begin to focus on the language preferences, attitudes and identity of the
Kashmiri speech community. These chapters are of utmost importance toward
accomplishing the author’s goal for the study as they provide a human
perspective to the history and facts about the Kashmiri speech community
previously discussed in the book. These final chapters explore the loss of
motivation within the speech community for maintaining Kashmiri, focus on the
negative perceptions toward Kashmiri and the positive feelings toward Urdu,
and discuss the role of the media in the attrition of Kashmiri. It is the
perceived prestige of Urdu in the speech community that causes attrition
within the speech community; this attrition takes the focus of chapter five.
Lexical accessibility was the factor that experienced the most attrition
according to Bhat, a loss that affects not only a language, but a culture as
well. The sixth and final chapter summarizes and discusses the study’s most
salient points.

EVALUATION

This book is a must-read for sociolinguists interested in language as it
relates to identity. It is also useful for those studying language planning
and policy, politics of language, minority languages and dialects, and
language loss and attrition. It provides a comprehensive overview of the
existing body of literature on language and identity and can be valuable as a
reference for any work that examines identity within speech communities. The
unique context of this study, attrition in a language within its own homeland,
makes it an essential reference for any linguist researching language loss in
a non-immigrant speech community. 

On a more broad level, this book provides a detailed account of cultural and
linguistic changes that occur in a minority language speech community when it
is overshadowed by the majority language’s power and prestige. This theme
makes the book suitable as a required reading or reference for graduate
courses on bilingualism or language planning and policy. 

The content of this book is concise and well organized. The figures and tables
in the book are attractive, easy to interpret, and provide insight into the
author’s methodology. Concerning methodology, however, the book does not offer
an elaborate account of respondent recruitment nor the specific research
instruments employed in the process of data collection. Perhaps such
information would detract from the overall purpose of the manuscript; that
being said, the book seems to leave readers curious about methodological
details. Nonetheless, the book presents all data in an appealing way. In
addition, the appendices support the book’s content and provide excellent
visual examples of changes in the Kashmiri speech community.

In sum, the book provides a somber reminder of the influence social and
political factors have on the usage and maintenance of any given language.
Youth in the Kashmiri speech community increasingly consider Kashmir a
“backward and useless language” (Bhat, 2017, p. 88) used by the rural and
uneducated. These negative attitudes toward Kashmiri manifested themselves in
quantitative data in this study that showed younger respondents had more
lexical knowledge of Urdu than Kashmiri. Attrition, negative attitudes toward
its speakers by outsiders, and the association of Kashmiri with “backwardness”
are factors that indicate a bleak future ahead for the language. 

As Bhat established in chapter one, language is tightly bound to culture, and
linguistic identity is considered a major characteristic of language. A threat
to a language is also a threat to the culture and identity of its speakers.
The perceived prestige of Urdu in the Kashmiri speech community and the spread
of English as a global language both pose a threat not only to Kashmiri as a
language, but as a culture as well.

This study carries implications in the field of sociolinguistics. Minority
language communities should be studied using a multifaceted approach that
takes into account macrolevel and microlevel factors that contribute to
language change and attrition. Studies of these unique speech communities must
take into account linguistic and functional perspectives as well as attitudes
held by the speakers themselves. These factors together provide a broader
understanding of changes within a minority speech community such as that of
Bhat’s study in the Kashmiri speech community. 

REFERENCES

Bhat, M. Ashraf. 2017. The changing roles and linguistic identities of the
Kashmiri speech community. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Bhatt, Rakesh Mohan. 1989. Language planning and language conflict: The case
of Kashmiri. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 75. 73-85.

Kachru, Braj B. 1969. A reference grammar of Kashmiri. Urbana: University of
Illinois.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kelsey Harper is a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Hispanic
Studies at Texas A&M University. Her dissertation research focuses on Peruvian
immigrants in the United States and how this speech community adapts to a new
cultural and linguistic setting where their variety of Spanish comes into
contact with others. Her research interests include language and identity,
Spanish in the United States, and foreign language pedagogy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-29-581	
----------------------------------------------------------