Background: South Asian Linguistic Analysis

The University of Illinois’s Department of Linguistics has done pioneering work on the structure and functions of South Asian languages. Under the leadership of Hans Henrich Hock and Braj. B. Kachru, our Department held the first conference on South Asian languages and linguistics in 1978. That conference heralded a new era in the description and analysis of language structure, variation, and use of these languages and, at the same time, installed a new paradigm of research in linguistics as new data and generalizations from South Asian languages forced a revision of theoretical understandings of language structure and use that were based previously solely on English and other western languages. Members of the UIUC linguistics faculty have since then been instrumental in hosting and/or planning numerous follow-up national and international conferences on South Asian languages and linguistics.

The study of South Asian languages has, since that first conference at Illinois, enhanced and transformed linguistic research methods, theoretical practices, and application of multilingual realities to the forms and functions of languages across cultures. It is not surprising, therefore, that the leading Stanford linguist, the late Charles Ferguson, gave his keynote address at the first conference on South Asian languages at Illinois on ‘Multilingualism as the object of linguistic description’—displacing the traditional canons of linguistic description and establishing new canons, of multilingualism, of the dynamic of languages in contact that emerges with its own linguistic, literary, and cultural identities. This new multilingual dynamic symbolizes the formal and functional variations, the divergent sociolinguistic contexts, the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and literary creativity, and the various identities languages accrue as a result of their acculturation in new sociolinguistic ecologies.

This new paradigm raises several interesting questions about theory, empirical validity, social responsibility and ideology. It invites (a) theoretical approaches to the study of language that are interdisciplinary in orientation, (b) methodologies that are sensitive to multilingual and multicultural realities of language-contact situations, and (c) pedagogies that respond to both intra- and international functions of language. The interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework has provided a broader understanding of the social and discursive relationships between (and within) speech communities, the institutional acquisition and use of linguistic resources, and the relationship between language and systems of domination and subordination. The field of South Asian language studies has received considerable attention among scholars of linguistics and literature, creative writers, language pedagogues, and literary critics.

In short, research in South Asian languages over the years after the first Illinois conference has brought into sharp focus the fallacies of monoglott standards in linguistic description and analysis and has replaced the older with a new, pluralistic paradigm.

Purpose of SALA-25 Conference

Over twenty-five years after the first conference on South Asian languages, we are organizing a conference, similar in size, scope and impact as the previous one, to critically re-appraise achievements in past research and to set the research agenda for the future. The purpose of this international and interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines (formal linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, literature, and culture theory) to present papers that address contemporary theoretical, methodological and pedagogical insights into the study of South Asian languages.

By bringing together some of the world’s most notable scholars on South Asian language studies, as invited speakers, the conference will not only substantially advance South Asian linguistic scholarship by creating opportunities for intense dialogue and interaction but also reinforce the University’s reputation as the world’s leader in South Asian language studies. It will doubtless be an event of historical importance in the humanities at Illinois.

The conference will also serve as part of the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Department of Linguistics. The South Asian languages (Hindi, Sanskrit, and Marathi, Sindhi) are a significant part of the Non-Western languages program of the Department of Linguistics.

Our purpose, in short, is to present to the academic community world-wide the current state of the art of South Asian languages studies in the interdisciplinary and international form it has taken as a result of the excellence of the scholars and their publications in the last twenty-five years.