Death of Vernaculars and Language Hegemony: An ethnography of the higher education sector in 21st century India

Title

Death of Vernaculars and Language Hegemony: An ethnography of the higher education sector in 21st century India

Creator

Kumaramkandath R.

Description

The paper examines how new age pedagogies and neoliberal policies consciously work towards naturalizing English languages hegemony in institutions of Higher Education (IHE) in India. An ethnographic study the paper foregrounds the precarious positioning of non-English Indian languages vis-vis the pervading discourses of internationalization and education as job/skill oriented. Hegemony of English in the present is coupled with a restructuring of language departments as well as fleeting market demands for human capital. The paper also brings into question the role of the Internet and related technologies in reorganizing the linguistic dynamics of HE. Instead of democratizing, the Internet produces new monopolies in knowledge production, controls knowledge traffic from global North to South and further legitimizes the language hegemony. The paper argues that, in the last two decades, the neoliberal rupture has been leading HE institutions to a death of vernaculars within their physical, cultural and academic spaces. 2024, Hiroshima University,Research Institute for Higher Education,. All rights reserved.

Source

Higher Education Forum, Vol-21, pp. 201-221.

Date

2024-01-01

Publisher

Hiroshima University,Research Institute for Higher Education,

Subject

English language hegemony; HE in India; knowledge traffic; language departments; techno-globalisation; vernaculars

Coverage

Kumaramkandath R., CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, India

Rights

Restricted Access

Relation

ISSN: 24329614

Format

Online

Language

English

Type

Article

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.15027/55015

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