Language is nature's gift to us, humans, and we use it to talk about the world. And we talk about not just the physical world but what it means to us as well. Thus at the same time, we live in two worlds: the world of the senses and the world of meanings. As we talk about us, we talk about the self and the other, about the way we relate to the world and to one another, the way we negotiate with the world and with each other. Furthermore, we use language, among other things, to reflect on our use of language; as a result, we have theories of language use: theories of communication and miscommunication, of information and making sense of information, of saying things pleasantly and offensively and of manipulating language to influence opinion. And we talk about these theories as well. We talk about, for example, the scope and the explanatory power of each and we study them from comparative and contrastive perspectives, and so on.
Inequality is an important feature of the society we live in; it is an aspect of the human situation in the world. Inequality in the society creates social hierarchy. Power matters and consciousness of power becomes part of our culture. Power governs the way we relate to each other and interact with each other. We observe linguistic etiquette as we engage in conversation. We say things and hide things or say them in a roundabout way so as to avoid causing discomfort and hurt to the addressee, and to protect ourselves, when the addressee is powerful. The relationship between language and culture is most explicit in conversation.
The fifteen articles in this book deal with these matters and some related ones. Quite a few of these belong to the area of conversational analysis and pragma stylistics. The data for analysis are mostly from the written texts, mostly literary and some non-literary news reports, interviews, transcribed conversations, etc. Most of these articles were written between 2004 and 2017.
B.N. Patnaik (b. 1942) is former Professor of English and Linguistics at IIT Kanpur where he taught generative linguistics, computational linguistics, linguistic communication and English. First to study Odia syntax within the generative linguistics framework, he has published papers on topics in theoretical and applied linguistics, language and culture, discourse linguistics and Sarala Mahabharata. He is the author of butroducing Saaralan Mahaabhaarata, Retelling as Interpretation: An Essay on Sarala Mahabharata, Language Mallers and Life's Little Tales. Among his co-edited books is Noam Chomsky's Architecture of Loiguage.
The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) was established on July 17, 1969 by the Government of India in Mysuru to help in evolving and implementing the language policy of the Government and to coordinate the development of Indian languages by conducting research in the areas of language analysis, language pedagogy, language technology and language use in the society. The Institute is also entrusted with the responsibility of assisting and improving the teaching of Indian languages at various levels by developing new methods, models, and materials and by making use of modern technology.
This collection of fifteen essays, most of which were written during 2004-20017, deal with aspects of the use of language. Using insights from mainly communication studies, socio-linguistics, discourse linguistics, pragmatics and conversational analysis, the essays analyse wide-ranging material from day-to-day speech, literary works and non-literary written texts, which capture the rhythm of natural conversation. These essays show how through language people connect with the world in complex ways. Power, language and culture, language and society and understanding language are among the main themes in these essays. Some of these show some inventiveness of approach. "Gandhi as a Communicator" and "Remarks on Chomsky's Activist Writing" highlight the importance of content analysis from a value perspective in the study of an act of communication. "Puri Boli", the speech of a small local population in the Temple town of Puri, brings out the creativity and energy of day-to-day talk by the so-called non-elite. "A Bhuta named Babana" speculates on how a metaphor is made; how an individual here a ghost becomes a symbol in course of time, completely losing in the process its ghost sense. "Confrontation: A Conversational Theoretical Perspective" and "On Language and Power: A Study of 'Edward and God", show how negotiation of power takes place between the participants during an act of tense interaction. "Food Talk in Oriya" is about wellness talk in informal conversation in this language which uses food terms for the purpose. It also shows how this holds for some other Indian languages as well. A brata katha narrative in Oriya is studied from the perspective of power, very probably for the first time. "Ancient Indian and Gricean Approaches to non-Literal Meaning" deals with the interpretation of figurative language in two well- known theories of conversational meaning. "A Study of Some Politeness Expressions in Oriya in Relation to Social Change" studies the language- culture relationship from a historical perspective. The range of topics and ideas dealt with in this book is really wide.
Although the topics are specialized, the writing throughout is jargon- free and lucid and on that account very reader-friendly. I believe that all those, be they specialists or non-specialists, interested in issues pertaining to the use of language in society will find this scholarly but eminently readable book both enjoyable and quite useful.
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