Multilingual Education in South Asia

Abstract

The hierarchical positioning of languages in the South Asian multilingual societies leads to language shift, marginalization and loss of less powerful or weakened languages and capability deprivation and poverty of the language communities. The linguistic double divide in South Asia is reflected in the role of English in fostering a hierarchical pecking order of languages, in pushing the major regional languages out of significant domains of use and cumulatively marginalizing other indigenous tribal minority (ITM) languages. The power of English in Indian society has created the first divide, between English and the dominant Indian languages. It has been called the English–Vernacular divide. The second divide, the Vernacular–Other divide, is between the major Indian languages and the ITM languages. Clearly, languages-in-education policy in South Asian countries reflects the sociolinguistic double divide with English as the most significant and sought after language in education and the ITM languages generally neglected.

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