“Old English” to refer to the language spoken in England before the Norman conquest, which is barely comprehensible to modern English speakers. The term “Old English” created a sense of history and continuity for English, which was used to legitimize the monolingual ideology. During the Indian national movement, literatures produced in other languages such as Braj Bhasha, were couched under the Hindi language in order to give it some historical legitimacy. This European monolingual state ideology gradually spread to become part of many other state policies. In the US, where until World War I, multilingual activities including those in German, Spanish and French were accepted, English emerged as a defining characteristic of being American. This was accompanied by hostility towards other languages and English became not only a dominant mode of communication between immigrants of different ethnic origins but also an insignia of patriotism and loyalty to America. This ideology of equating language with state loyalty became quite manifest in cases of discrimination against Muslims following 9/11. For example, a passenger on a Southwest Airline flight was kicked out 8 because he uttered the Arabic expression Insha Allah, God-willing, on the plane. A very grotesque expression of equating language with patriotism and loyalty surfaced in Delhi in 2016 when some members of the right-wing RSS approached artists who were writing an Urdu couplet on a wall as part of the Delhi government’s #MyDilliStory campaign and ordered them to stop writing in Urdu and forced them to write Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name over it. They also asked them to go to Pakistan. The members of the RSS said they could tolerate anything but the Urdu script. To them, Urdu, a language spoken in India by Muslims, is a sign of a lack of patriotism. Communicative Function of Language In sociolinguistics literature, the function of language as a carrier of social meanings such as national identity, loyalty and patriotism is referred to as indexical. The function of language to convey ideas, such as what I am doing right now, is referred to as communicative function. With regard to COVID-19, it has become clear that the best way to fight its outbreak is to make people aware of how it spreads and how it can be stopped. 8 https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/04/speaking-arabic-flying-160420051548323.html
30
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online