Mother tongue marginalisation: an empirical study on language visibility and vitality in public space of an Indian satellite town

Abstract

ABSTRACT Linguistic landscaping is an emerging field of sociolinguistics exploring language in its textual form in the public sphere. Studies on Linguistic Landscape (LL) can be used as a tool to interpret language vitality in a given territory. The present study investigates visibility and vitality of languages in public space of Bihta, an upcoming satellite town of Patna, the capital city of the Indian state of Bihar. The corpus of the study including both government and private signs are collected by using diversity sampling method. The result of the study shows the prevalence of Hindi and English signs. The exclusion of the majority languages spoken in Bihta in the LL demonstrates the imposition of the government language policy of the state and the country as well. Attitude towards language greatly influences the landscaping of the public space. The study also solicits the attitude of bottom-up actors regarding the language choice in the LL of Bihta. Using Bourdieusian approach of language and symbolic power and linguistic capital, the study explains the marginalisation of mother tongues spoken in Bihta, Bihar since the speakers of Bihta consider the official language of the state as their linguistic capital which symbolises power and prestige for them.