Problematizing Language Studies: Cultural, Theoretical and Applied Perspectives : Essays in Honour of Rama Kant Agnihotri

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. I. Cultural Perspective: 1. Sanskritic vs Syncretic: Sir William Jones and Indian Pluralism and Plurality/Michael J. Franklin. 2. Braj Reinvented: Some Colonial Approaches to Hindi Dialects/Arthur Dudney. 3. The Language of Love: A Study of the Amorous and Erotic Associations of Urdu/Tariq Rahman. 4. Himalayan Languages, Hindi and English: Contentment or containment?/Mahendra K. Varma. 5. English in India and the role of the Elite in the national project/Annie Montaut. 6. Has globalization given a new legitimacy to diversity?/Paroo Nihalani. 7. Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani: Evolution of the language of a people/Shreesh Chaudhary. 8. The Case for Hindustani Revisited/Ayesha Kidwai. 9. The Politics of Multiculturalism/Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Haobam Basantarani. 10. Contextuality, critical discourse analysis and structuration Theory: Sociological basis for analyszing heavenly ornaments (Bihishti Zewar)/S. Imtiaz Hasnain. 11. On Puri Boli/B.N. Patnaik. 12. On unearthing a civilization/Ranjit Singh Rangila. 13. From Margin to mainstream: The growing domain of language switching and mixing in contemporary South African television drama/Kay McCormick. 14. Code Switching and the politics of Nostalgia/Rakesh M. Bhatt. II. Theoretical Perspective: 15. Confessions of a Minor morphologist: Some remarks on morphological complexity/Rajendra Singh. 16. The Hindi long vowel problem: A substantivist approach/Probal Dasgupta. 17. Indian Languages as intonational phrase languages/Caroline Fery. 18. More Freedom on the left/Gisbert Fanselow. 19. Morphosyntax of Hindi infinitives/Rajesh Kumar. 20. Compositionality in complex predicates/Achla M. Raina. 21. Limits to compositionality of meaning: some Notes with reference to English and Hindi/Rajneesh Arora. 22. On the Nature of reason in the present-day academic research/Pramod Pandey. 23. Towards branding Indian linguistics: A Linguistic destination next/Shailendra Kumar Singh. 24. Rough Notes/Udaya Narayana Singh. 25. How do I know that you are not a CBI Agent?: Examining the identity of researcher in sociolinguistic fieldwork/Rizwan Ahmad. III. Applied Perspective: 26. Using the Mother Tongues for learning and teaching other tongues: Theory and practice/A.L. Khanna. 27. On the teaching of Indian language and literatures abroad/Omkar N. Koul. 28. Teaching English to young learners: How far have we come? How Far Can We Go?/Rama Mathew. 29. Restructuring general English language curricula at the tertiary level: issues and possibilities/S.R. Prahlad. 30. English at the Primary Level: A Study of teaching vocabulary/Panchanan Mohanty. 31. Communicative language teaching and large classes: Conflicts and convergence/Mohammad Aslam. 32. Process of learning ESL vs. EFL: A Study of Errors in acquisition vs. learning/Vaishna Narang and Mi Yang Cha. 33. Kashmiri-English Contact: Some Phonological issues/Aadil A. Kak. 34. Lexico-Semantic features of Indian pidgin English/Priya Hosali. 35. Globalization and English Language in India: An Overview/Raj Nath Bhat. 36. The Study of lexical phrases among proficient users of English/Anju Sahgal Gupta and Madhu Gurtu.

As a mark of esteem and affection, we bring this Festschrift to honor Rama Kant for his interests and work, for the questions and concerns he has raised and for the subtle and not so subtle ways in which he has influenced and even altered out agenda. The articles included in the Festschrift reflect the range of Rama Kant’s interests and report nearly all that is currently happening in Indian linguistics and language studies worldwide.

All contributions in this volume look at cultural, theoretical and applied aspects of the problem of language studies. Articles in the cultural section dwell upon issues that influence the form and use of language. Issues pertaining to the theory of grammar in general, and of syntax, morphology or phonetics and phonology have been grouped together in the theoretical section. Articles in the section on applied linguistics discuss the problems of language pedagogy, language planning, data bases, etc. (Jacket)