Changing Contours of Mother Tongue-English Bilingualism in India

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Keywords: mother tongue; types of bilingualism and multilingualism in India; code switching; code mixing; self identification; speech repertoire of Hindi speaking educated elite; language attitudes of urban elite; language movements

To cite this article

Liudmila V. Khokhlova Changing Contours of Mother Tongue-English Bilingualism in India. // Lomonosov Oriental Studies Journal. 2014. N 1, p.3–19

Liudmila V. Khokhlova (Lomonosov Moscow State University)

Abstract

The type of bilingualism and multilingualism of the urban intellectual elites in India is absolutely different from the bilingualism of the intellectual elite formed by previous generations. In spite of the permanent increase in the number of people identifying themselves as “native speakers” of various Indian languages and in spite of the role of the official propaganda claiming to provide support to mother tongues and especially to Hindi, the role of mother tongues as tools of expressing intellectual demands of the speakers and of preserving cultural traditions of the society is rapidly decreasing. The symmetrical type of bilingualism of the “parents” is gradually substituted by the recessive bilingualism of the younger generation.