Lang-Lit Controversy: Pedagogic Pandemonium

Abstract

It is not uncommon to hear from the academics that standards of English studies have drastically deteriorated over the period of time. One of the causal factors normally attributed to this decline in standards is students’ incapacity and incapability to read and appreciate literary texts. But one should not conveniently overlook the fact that English studies in India is made available only through academic institutions where teachers and pedagogy play a vital role in benchmarking and sustaining standards. Here prevails the pedagogic pandemonium first in the minds of literary academics who themselves face the linguistic handicap of English as a second language. They cannot equate themselves as much with native teachers of English literature as teachers of regional literatures in India. Ironically, for a majority of English literature students at all levels, English is still a foreign language. Hence, while English literature teachers face a single disadvantage of using English as a second language, English literature students confront doubt disadvantages: English as a foreign language and they have no competence in it. Hence, it is a silent conspiracy to exclude language study from literary study by way of emphasising the contents. Linguistic competence is the first and foremost requirement for acquiring literary competence. Both cannot be acquired simultaneously, but only successively. Analysis and appreciation of literary texts mercifully rests on language which provides the necessary matrix for the creation of literature. It is not justifiable and fair to level charges against students when they never ever get an opportunity to acquire literary competence for both aesthetic appreciations subjectively and cognitive comprehension objectively. Students, in fact, become victims of the ‘cell-prison’ status being internalized first by the academics and then accorded to ‘lang- lit’ components of aesthetic branch of human knowledge. This paper aims to examine the importance of language as a subject and as a medium in teaching of English literature, and it sets a working hypothesis that language is an equally important and indispensable tool for creation and consumption of literature.