Scripting the border: script practices and territorial imagination among Santali speakers in eastern India
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Nishaant Choksi
Abstract
This article examines the role of ``borders'' in the writing practices of Santali speakers, who are spread across the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Assam in eastern India. A tension between a ``trans-border'' linguistic homogeneity and a ``bordered'' linguistic heterogeneity occurs in discussions around script. Santali is written in the various ``official'' scripts. Together with regional scripts, there is a recently invented script, called Ol Chiki (`writing symbol') in circulation as well as a Roman script invented by Christian missionaries. This article examines the alternating use of Ol Chiki, Roman and regional scripts in Santali language media. I argue that these media simultaneously posit a linguistically homogenous future while at the same time affirming a present that is deeply influenced by differing linguistic environments.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Towards a sociolinguistics of the border
- A borderlands' perspective of language and globalization
- Linguistic landscapes on the other side of the border: signs, language and the construction of cultural identity in Transnistria
- Scripting the border: script practices and territorial imagination among Santali speakers in eastern India
- Determinants of language reproduction and shift in a transnational community
- From Trujillo to the terremoto: the effect of language ideologies on the language attitudes and behaviors of the rural youth of the northern Dominican border
- From ``Spanish-only'' cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border
- Competing language ideologies about societal multilingualism among cross-border workers in Luxembourg
- Nationalist border practices: a critical account of how and why an English language classroom on the US/Mexico border reproduces nationalism
- Third border talk: intersubjectivity, power negotiation and the making of race in Spanish language classrooms
- Mobilizing voices and evaluations across representational boundaries – equitably and adequatively
- Book reviews
- Book review
- Book review
- Small languages and small language communities 76
- The Bajjika language and speech community Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Towards a sociolinguistics of the border
- A borderlands' perspective of language and globalization
- Linguistic landscapes on the other side of the border: signs, language and the construction of cultural identity in Transnistria
- Scripting the border: script practices and territorial imagination among Santali speakers in eastern India
- Determinants of language reproduction and shift in a transnational community
- From Trujillo to the terremoto: the effect of language ideologies on the language attitudes and behaviors of the rural youth of the northern Dominican border
- From ``Spanish-only'' cheap labor to stratified bilingualism: language, markets and institutions on the US-Mexico border
- Competing language ideologies about societal multilingualism among cross-border workers in Luxembourg
- Nationalist border practices: a critical account of how and why an English language classroom on the US/Mexico border reproduces nationalism
- Third border talk: intersubjectivity, power negotiation and the making of race in Spanish language classrooms
- Mobilizing voices and evaluations across representational boundaries – equitably and adequatively
- Book reviews
- Book review
- Book review
- Small languages and small language communities 76
- The Bajjika language and speech community Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
