LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 22:4 April 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

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Patterns of Language Use among Balti Speakers of Kargil:
A Sociolinguistic Study

Zahid Bashir and Ahmed Musavir

Abstract

The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir possesses several minority ethnolinguistic groups speaking different languages. The sustainability of these groups has been under continuous threat over the years. The prolonged language contact and migration of the members of these communities from traditional homelands to cities and towns has adversely altered their patterns of language use. When we notice some altered patterns of language use among indigenous languages, it becomes very difficult for its speaker to retain it in many domains of day-to-day use. Since language stability and maintenance is always seen as to how speakers use and maintain their language in comparison to the dominant language. Baker (2011) points out that language maintenance is the “relative language stability in the number and distribution of its speakers, its proficient usage by children and adults, and its retention in specific domains (e.g., home, school, religion)”. Since the Erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir is home to several small and ethnic linguistic groups speaking different languages. The members of these groups have been migrating from their traditional homelands for many reasons to towns and cities. This migration of the speakers has decreased the demographic count of the speakers and the contact with dominant languages has also resulted in partial or complete shift from their mother tongues. The present paper is an attempt to inquire about patterns of language use among Ethnic community of Balti living in the far flung area of Kargil Tehsil of Union territory of Ladakh. The Ethnic Baltis of Kargil are migrating at an alarming rate to Srinagar and Ganderbal districts of Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and members of the community are therefore in close contact with the dominant Kashmiri community. Therefore, it is obvious that the dominant languages like Urdu and Kashmiri may have taken some domains of languages which earlier used to be the domains of the ethnic language.

Keywords: Balti, language contact, patterns of language use, Ethnolinguistic groups.

1. Introduction

It is not commonplace for people to choose which language to employ in regular communication, especially if they live in a multilingual society. Someone who lives in a monolingual society would make such a selection easily. People who live in a bilingual or multilingual country, on the other hand, must make additional decisions about which language to employ because everyone speaks more than one language. It's also typical that they don't all speak the same language. As a result, domain analysis, as advocated by Joshua Fishman (1972), is critical for gaining a thorough knowledge of a bilingual or multilingual country's language condition.

The language used by an individual may be determined by the interlocutor and the context in which the conversation takes place. Originally it was Schmidt-Rohr who proposed the domain concept in the 1930s (as attributed in Fishman's 1970s works), as a way of sorting out distinct regions of language use in multilingual cultures that are relevant for language choice. Domains were viewed as theoretical constructs that could explain the language in Fishman's interpretation which were supposed to be a more powerful explanatory tool than more obvious (and observable) parameters like the topic, place (setting), and interlocutor. According to Fishman (Ibid), domains are “the occasions in which one language (variant, dialect, style, etc.) is habitually employed rather than (or in addition to) another” (37).

The domain of language use has proven to be an important construct in studies on language preservation and shift, and domain analysis has helped a lot in understanding language behavior among minority communities. Greenfield (1970), a pioneer in domain analysis, divided the innumerable social circumstances he saw during his fieldwork among the Puerto Rican population in New York, whose members spoke both Spanish and English, into five domains: family, friendship, religion, education, and job.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Zahid Bashir and Ahmed Musavir
Department of Linguistics
University of Kashmir, Srinagar
Zahidbashir367@gmail.com
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