• Register levels of ethno-national purity: The ethnicization of language and community in Mauritius

    Author(s):
    Patrick Eisenlohr (see profile)
    Date:
    2004
    Item Type:
    Article
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/e105-j245
    Abstract:
    Language is involved in processes of group identification in that it provides a focus for explicit discourses of identity and constitutes a field of less overt practices for creating groupness. Drawing on examples from Mauritian television broadcasting, this study traces the ethnicization of Mauritian Bhojpuri as a “Hindu language” through the hierarchization and subsuming of linguistic practices under larger language labels with ethno-national significance. Purist forms of Mauritian Bhojpuri that are locally perceived as “intermediate” registers between Hindi and Bhojpuri are used to represent Hindi as a language spoken in Mauritius, and at the same time to link Mauritian Bhojpuri ideologically to Hindu identity. This blurring of language boundaries serves a Hindu nationalist agenda in a diasporic location by establishing new links between linguistic forms and ethno-national values. (Linguistic anthropology, nationalism, language ideology, language and com- munity, multilingualism, Mauritius, Indian diaspora)
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    2004
    Journal:
    Language in Society
    Volume:
    33
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    59 - 80
    ISSN:
    0047-4045
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    10 months ago
    License:
    Attribution
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf lisarticle-1-2004.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 332

    Back to Deposits