Language regimes and corporeal practices of ‘making known’: Speech action, collective assembly, and the politics of recognition in India

Publication date: Available online 10 November 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Lisa MitchellAbstractThe language regime that imposed an alien standard on the more economically and socially disadvantaged communities and regions of India where Telugu is spoken would likely not have had as large an impact if it had not occurred along with another, even more significant shift in communicative regimes that has been much less documented. This paper argues that over the course of the long nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, individual speech action, the voice of the autonomous individual, and new forms of oral deliberation and debate began to be valorized in ways that diminished the power and legitimacy of collective, corporeal forms of communication and mediation. The new expectations placed on speech are exemplified by the Telugu ‘Spoken Language Movement’ of the early twentieth century. This essay uses the movement as one illustration of the impact of transformations in local ideologies of language and the interests that have supported and benefited from these ideologies.
Source: Language and Communication - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research