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The Social Life of a Tamil Heritage Language Industry

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The Social Life of a Tamil Heritage Language Industry SONIA NEELA DAS New York University Rewriting the past and reimagining the future: The social life of a Tamil heritage language industry ABSTRACT everal competing and complementary discourses about “heritage Globally circulating discourses associated with language” circulating throughout the world have affected popu- heritage language industries often promote lar understandings of cultural and linguistic change over the past temporally dichotomous views of spoken and written few decades. The most global, deriving from UNESCO’s notion of languages that deny coeval status to linguistic “intangible heritage,” designates certain oral folkloric traditions minorities. In the multilingual city of Montreal, S as requiring urgent “preservation” and “revitalization” to ensure their fu- Quebec, where Sri Lankan refugees work to preserve ture survival. More often than not, these humanitarian efforts deny co- a classicalist style of Written Tamil and Indian eval status to the verbal repertoires of “timeless” (usually indigenous and immigrants work to revitalize a modernist style of rural) peoples and literacy practices of “modernizing” liberal institutions Spoken Tamil, this division of labor is undermined (UNESCO 2011a, 2011b).1 Also popular among diasporic and migrant peo- by elders and youth who, in mixing colloquial and ples are discourses depicting second- and third-generation descendants as literary styles of Tamil, French, and English, reframe progressively incompetent in either spoken or written languages of their curricular and nationalist discourses of language ancestors. In this case, pedagogical initiatives to teach “ancestral” or “her- loss and degeneration into more empowering itage” languages to minority children de-emphasize lifelong processes of narratives of developmental progress and language learning that occur simultaneously among youth and elders alike. ethnolinguistic identification. [heritage language Complementing both discourses are nationalist policies that further desig- industry, temporality, urban multilingualism, nate local vernaculars as “classical,” “international,” or “official” languages. globalization, Tamil diaspora, Montreal] Some of these policies reify dynamic “historical” processes of language contact as static “historicized” objects of sociolinguistic variation, whereas others resignify sociolinguistic variation as socioeconomic and moral dis- tinctions between speakers of purist “standard” languages and corrupted “nonstandard” languages. Regardless of their differences, collectively such discourses and policies entail a single “representational economy” (Keane 2003) based on the common temporal characterization of literary lan- guages as timeless and enduring and colloquial languages as evolving and evanescent. Documenting and teaching heritage languages thus flattens the social life of minority languages and masks the reproduction of soci- olinguistic inequalities by promoting dichotomous views of spoken and written language. In this article, I investigate how ideologies of temporal relationships be- tween spoken and written language are institutionally and interactively ne- gotiated through nationalist policies and diasporic projects to preserve and AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 774–789, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2011 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01336.x Social life of a heritage language industry American Ethnologist revitalize the use of minority languages in urban, multi- and “revitalize” the use of colloquial, or Spoken, Tamil lingual contexts. Specifically, I focus on how multiple gen- among descendants of Indian immigrants, local diaspora erational and migrant cohorts of Indian Tamils and Sri leaders have devised a division of language labor unique Lankan Tamils living in Montreal, Quebec, emphasize cer- to Montreal. In no other site of the Tamil-speaking dias- tain grammatical and pragmatic contrasts between collo- pora, including nearby Toronto, do speakers interpret gram- quial and literary languages to rewrite the past and reimag- matical and pragmatic contrasts between Spoken Tamil and ine the future of this rapidly diversifying diaspora. Draw- Written Tamil as emblematic of their ethnonational identi- ing on ethnographic and linguistic research conducted at ties as do residents of Montreal.4 various schools, temples, and other sites of Tamil language Unfortunately, most studies of heritage language ed- instruction from 2004 to 2006,2 I reveal that, whereas cur- ucation ignore these crucial ideological dimensions in ricular discourses promote a dichotomous view of Spoken explaining how children learn to identify with a minor- Tamil and Written Tamil as the temporally and grammati- ity language as reified heritage. Notable exceptions include cally distinct heritage languages of Indians and Sri Lankans Barbra Meek’s (2010) study of language revitalization in respectively, teachers and students regularly mix colloquial the Canadian Yukon, where cultural values of respect are and literary styles of Tamil, as well as French and English, shown to have varying impact on children’s lifelong acqui- to reframe nationalist and curricular discourses of language sition of pragmatic and grammatical competence in Kaska, loss and degeneration into more empowering narratives of as well as Patrick Eisenlohr’s (2006) study of “ancestral lan- ethnolinguistic identification and developmental progress. guages” in Mauritius, where local and transnational insti- Understanding how ethnic minorities learn to enact social tutions are found to collaboratively regiment the language change by speaking, writing, and identifying with a heritage loyalties of different ethnoreligious groups by teaching chil- language is especially relevant in the case of Montreal Que- dren to speak in purified “ancestral languages.” Among bec, where accelerating rates of immigration from nonfran- other contributions, these studies reveal how temporal nar- cophone countries are currently challenging the reproduc- ratives of cultural progress or moral degeneration are often tion of the dominant linguistic nationalist regime. implicit in diasporic projects and nationalist policies that Tamil, with a vast literary history that spans more than fund heritage language education programs. Along a differ- 2,000 years and diverse verbal repertoires that span multi- ent vein, Miyako Inoue’s (2004) work on gendered language ple continents, is a rich semiotic resource for investigating suggests that discursive analyses of temporal narratives can how notions of linguistic and cultural heritage are discur- more broadly elucidate mechanisms of social reproduc- sively constructed with broad semiotic appeal. Since pre- tion and change. She analyzes how 19th- and 20th-century colonial times, Tamil-speaking societies in South Asia have Japanese nationalist narratives, in contrasting the past use endorsed the idea that written forms of literary Tamil are of an idealized, purist women’s language with the present- older than vernacular styles of colloquial Tamil because of day use of vulgar women’s speech, allow for periodic re- their grammatical and stylistic similarities with South In- assertions of patriarchal dominance following rapid trans- dian classical literature of the Sangam period (300 B.C.E. to formations of gender relations. Similarly, in contemporary 100 C.E.). Colonial philologists and modern linguists have Montreal, where a growing multiethnic and multilingual reinforced this belief by further categorizing Tamil as a population stands poised to replace a shrinking major- diglossic language. According to this functionalist schema, ity francophone population, temporal narratives depicting purist styles of literary Tamil or Written Tamil (centamil or heritage languages as purist artifacts or corrupted vernac- ¯ eluttutamil) are generally used in formal contexts and im- ulars permit nationalist leaders to de-emphasize the cul- ¯ pure styles of colloquial Tamil or Spoken Tamil (kot.untamil tural and linguistic contributions of ethnic minorities to ¯ or peccutamil¯ ) in informal contexts (Annamalai and Steever Queb´ ecois´ society. However because in the case of Mon- ¯ 1998; Britto 1986; Pillai 1965). When the Indian government treal government officials and diaspora leaders collabora- officially declared Tamil a “classical language” in 2004, lin- tively fund most heritage language education programs, it guists from India, France, Germany, and the United States is likely that teachers and students have significant agency collectively petitioned UNESCO to establish a central li- in deciding whether to accept or reject any essentialist ideas brary for storing rare collections of palm-leaf and paper and moral values associated with their heritage language.5 manuscripts written in classical Tamil (UNESCO 2010).3 The mass production of pedagogical resources for dif- Upon hearing the news, Indians and Sri Lankans living in ferentiated Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil markets in Canada Montreal rejoiced in the assured future posterity of Tamil as and abroad also bespeaks a highly organized and profitable a literary language even as they continued to struggle with industry. This article, which focuses on the “allocation of its ongoing disappearance from their children’s verbal and resources, the coordination of production, and the distri- written repertoires. Working in collaboration with govern- bution of goods and services” (Irvine 1989:249) pertaining ment officials
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