Anindita Sahoo
The concept of ‘identity’ has undergone radical
changes in the recent years. Starting from cultural to linguistic
to regional identity- all of them have undergone significant shifts and
scholars attribute such changes to the ‘crisis of identity’. The research on
identities has drawn the attention of researchers from various domains of
Humanities and Social Sciences. Among these, linguistic research on identity
has been more extensive as there are various socio-economic issues involved
with the term ‘identity’ and it has been deeply rooted at the very core of
language and society. My study on language and identity focuses on the current
perspectives on concept of identity and its strong correlations with culture
and language. It explores some significant theoretical insights and empirical
findings vis-à-vis language, culture and identity.
Social identity encompasses participant roles,
positions, relationships, reputations, and other dimensions of social personae,
which are conventionally linked to epistemic and affective stances. We use
language as individuals though it has a social history attached to it which
identifies us as an individual, member of a group/s, community or nation.
Within the interactional identity discourses framework, the network of
identities, like age, gender, ethnicity, and geographical background are
communicatively produced and positioned. My attempts are to examine how individual
and group identities are articulated through language and how preserving one’s
language results in preserving one’s repertoire of identities.
The empirical evidences are based on the Odia ethnic
group who comprise the diaspora in the national capital of India. The Odia
speaking population here is treated as a depressed community which is poor and
deprived of many present day luxuries. Most often their image is built upon the
general notion of a poor state which is always affected by floods and cyclones.
Many of the city dwellers in NCR assume that Odias are a community who always
struggle for the livelihood. They are made fun of their regional accent while
speaking Hindi or English. Moreover, Odia as a full-fledged independent
language often misunderstood as a part of Bangla which has better world
presence and recognition. In spite of having a rich heritage of art and culture
of Odisha this state doesn’t have a strong global presence due to lack of good
representatives. However, the situation seems to be encouraging these days due
to the participation of Odias in various domains that include sports, politics,
IT sector and education in national as well as global level. The results of my study on the issue of
language and identity explicate that the impacts of globalization and internet
applications have influenced the linguistic identities. Despite the increase of
global presence of Odisha, Odia as a language is facing some serious existence
threat. The new generations Odias are not aware of their identity because of
the very little use Odia language in the family space. My contention is that if
such a trend continues, the day is not far when multicultural and multilingual
Odia diaspora will soon lose its Odia identity and will be identified as a part
of the larger linguistic community of Hindi speakers.
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