Surface Politics: Scaling Multiscriptality in an Indian Village Market

Abstract

Linguistic anthropologists have used the concept of “scale” to describe how everyday interactions are linked to global flows and movements, particularly in the urban centers of Europe and North America. This article reconceptualizes the notion of “scale” by examining how residents in a small market village in eastern India order, in both hierarchical and nonhierarchical configurations, multiple graphic repertoires in dialogic engagement with the built environment. In the article, I suggest that script is an important semiotic modality through which indigenous and nonindigenous residents align notions of community, language, and territory according to different evaluative metrics, often in conflicting and antagonistic ways. These differential scalings of multiple scripts on the village's surfaces, and the disjunctures that exist between these scalings illuminate how dominant language hegemonies are perpetuated and, at the same time, contested by indigenous and minority language communities.