This article is a sharing of emergent ideas about the potential role of languages in teacher education (TE) programmes in multilingual contexts in India. Languages play a critical role in TE programmes where they shape both the learning as well as the future teaching of prospective teachers. This role acquires particular significance in…

Issues in the study of bilingualism and multilingualism in India and Pakistan are examined, including the delineation of linguistic boundaries, defining a society that is multicultural and yet has developed a "communication ethos" based on a core of common experience, the difficulty in interpreting language role and defining language…

Sociolinguistic patterns of India are discussed. (LG)

A study examined traditional Hindi songs typically sung by women during north Indian weddings, using pragmatic and semantic analysis. Some historical and cultural background for the practice of women's singing at weddings is offered. It is suggested that gender roles are defined and regulated through the language of this speech event, and that…

Indian languages seem to have emerged from a phase of total dependence on English for new input. Several Indian languages have now evolved vocabularies and structural nuances to handle several new registers and styles necessary for modern society. Some of the change has occurred through conscious language policy encouraging multilingualism and the…

The notion of language dependency presupposes that there is a hierarchy of languages in a multilingual society, and that each language is assigned a functional role in a multilingual individual's restricted or extended spheres of linguistic interaction. In South Asia, language dependency has resulted in linguistic convergence of two types: (1)…

The Ljubljana seminar, whose background and working papers are presented in this volume, was an outcome of the United Nations' consideration of the problems of ethnic and linguistic minorities. The twenty-five papers cover topics such as the study of multinational societies; the protection of minorities and minority rights in Yugoslavia,…