Death of Vernaculars and Language Hegemony: An ethnography of the higher education sector in 21st century India

Kumaramkandath Rajeev

Higher Education Forum

[PISSN] 2432-9614

[NCID] AA1187795X

The paper examines how new age pedagogies and neoliberal policies consciously work towards “naturalizing” English language’s hegemony in institutions of Higher Education (IHE) in India. An ethnographic study the paper foregrounds the precarious positioning of non-English Indian languages vis-à-vis the pervading discourses of internationalization and education as job/skill oriented. Hegemony of English in the present is coupled with a restructuring of language departments as well as fleeting market demands for human capital. The paper also brings into question the role of the Internet and related technologies in reorganizing the linguistic dynamics of HE. Instead of democratizing, the Internet produces new monopolies in knowledge production, controls knowledge traffic from global North to South and further legitimizes the language hegemony. The paper argues that, in the last two decades, the neoliberal rupture has been leading HE institutions to a death of vernaculars within their physical, cultural and academic spaces.

English language hegemony

HE in India

vernaculars

knowledge traffic

techno-globalisation

language departments

eng

Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University

広島大学高等教育研究開発センター