The Language Loss of the Indigenous

G. N. Devy, Geoffrey V. Davis, K. K. Chakravarty

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317293132
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume traces the theme of the loss of language and culture in numerous post-colonial contexts. It establishes that the aphasia imposed on the indigenous is but a visible symptom of a deeper malaise — the mismatch between the symbiotic relation nurtured by the indigenous with their environment and the idea of development put before them as their future. The essays here show how the cultures and the imaginative expressions of indigenous communities all over the world are undergoing a phase of rapid depletion. They unravel the indifference of market forces to diversity and that of the states, unwilling to protect and safeguard these marginalized communities.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of cultural and literary studies, linguistics, sociology and social anthropology, as well as tribal and indigenous studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Notes on contributors
• Glossary
• Introduction: Aphasia: the fate of the indigenous languages
• 1 Symbolic power, nation-state and indigenous language: a sociological analysis of tribes in central India
• 2 Text, subtext and context of Indian culture in the developmental paradigm of globalization
• 3 Adivasi art: the convergence of the intangible and the tangible
• 4 Aesthetics of representation: media and Canadian Aboriginal resistance
• 5 The forgotten tribe: the Kuravars of Tamil Nadu
• 6 Tesu and Jhenjhi: a festival celebrating cultural life
• 7 Articulating tribal culture: the oral tradition of Lambadas
• 8 Micro and macro intergenerational oral communication in the Zion Christian Church
• 9 Sacred places as traditional heritage for the Vhavenda indigenous community of Limpopo Province, South Africa
• 10 Translating power, gender and caste: negotiating identity, memory and history: a study of Bama’s Sangati
• 11 Historiography or imagination? The documentation of traditional Luo cultural memory in Kenyan fiction
• 12 Tackling endangered languages in the midst of diversity
• 13 Language shift among the Waddar speakers
• 14 Towards a revitalization of Urhobo: an endangered language of Delta State, Nigeria
• 15 Itsekiri: threatened and endangered
• 16 Kikuyu phonology and orthography: any hope for continuity of indigenous languages?
• 17 Endangered! The Igbo language dilemma in Nigeria
• 18 Aspects of discourse structure: a case of particles
• 19 Mobile telephone communication and the Akan language
• Index