THE POLITICS OF LINGUISTIC MARGINALIZATION IN THE THIRD SPACE: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The politics of language is linked to power struggles among various tiers of society. The centre is usually imbued with colonial values, therefore peripheral groups aspire to reach it. Colonial and Native become “Others” to each other. Most Subaltern theorists list the causes for this otherness, with the Orientalist brand of colonialism as regarded by Edward Said. Linguistic choices trigger a constant display of inclusion and exclusion. A Eurocentric historiography underlines this difference. “Othering” has become an exercise in de-humanising the marginalized. This paper dwells on the dynamics of uneven power positioning among social hierarchies on account of linguistic choices. The impact of colonial language policies on postcolonial societies has been historically contextualized to note departures as well as compliance to the said policies in specific socio-political contexts. How this friction translates in the binary opposition evident in the centre/periphery black/white, master/slave, man/woman and the colonizer/colonized dichotomies will be studied to evaluate the uneven power positions. The struggle of the marginalized sections for survival by learning a language conditioned with better socio-economic and political prospects at the cost of Mother Tongue (MT) or Language 1 (L1) has been critically analysed to study the impact of marginalization. Postcolonial theory has been employed as a methodical approach to analyse linguistic marginalization. Politics and language are bound up when the latter is not considered neutral. This serves as a historical background to the phenomenon of linguistic marginalization.

Keywords: Colonialism, Subaltern, Native, Otherness, Binaries, Marginalization, Third Space