PROJECT HOST : Read here : https://mediatingmultilingualism.com/project-host/

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Mediating Multilingualism is a project supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund and initiated by the University of Highlands and Islands (UHI) Language Sciences Institute in collaboration with Amity University Haryana (AUH), with the aim to document some of our endangered and indigenous languages and help save them from going extinct. The project has received support from the Scottish Funding Council under the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA). This activity is taken up in the spirit of collaboration funded and encouraged by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

The full title of the project is “Mediating multilingualism in a local community context – a sharing of innovation and expertise between Scotland, Ireland, and India.”

PARTNERS

1. The University of the Highlands and Islands, is technically a limited company registered in Scotland number SC148203, Scottish Charity number SC022228 and its registered office is located at 12B Ness Walk, Inverness IV3 5SQ, Inverness-shire, United Kingdom.
2. Amity University Haryana, Gurgaon, is a university established by the Amity Education Group through the Haryana Private Universities Act 2010, and having its administrative offices at Amity Education Valley, Gurgaon District, Manesar, Haryana 122413, India

The ODA Rules and regulations are described in detail under the following at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/official-development-assistance-oda–2 and https://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/34086975.pdf.

MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE PROJECT

Multilingualism has often been viewed as an aberrant situation that results from a cultural contact situation. This is also because copy-book language planners are accustomed to working on geographies with a single language and its varieties. Some have even tried to link socio-economic progress of the nation-states with their being largely monolingual initially. But the way the forces in world economics act, and with the changes in the research priorities on Multilingualism, it becomes evident that this correlation does not always work. In the recent times, many new world players have emerged in the world scene which is highly diversified linguistically. It is felt necessary that the linguistic documentation would benefit greatly from a close study of this diversity. Such documentations benefit both hardcore linguistic analysis as well as preparation of sociolinguistic profile of spaces. They also provide inputs for language planning agencies to chalk out appropriate strategies. The present data-rich project would be hopefully of great use to different segments of scholars.

Meanwhile, many across South Asian countries have started working on language planning as a discipline by classifying their tasks into Status and Corpus Planning in the ‘80s. The entire work on Corpus Planning is geared towards making a standard variety of a ‘chosen’ language perform well in all applications. However, those engaged in the exercises of Status Planning note with concern that the real challenges come from a multi-cultural context. How one or some or more of them are to be empowered or focused and at what cost have been some of their concerns. The chaos and cacophony are such that many critics raised a fundamental doubt in the late ’60s about usefulness of ‘mediation’ or ‘intervention’ by asking: ‘Can Language be Planned?’ (CLBP). Ever since 1971, after the debate resulted in an inspiring anthology nicknamed as CLBP, many studies focusing on both Global North and Global South contexts emerged that confirmed that languages need to be managed, and communities have to learn to live with one another in peace and harmony. Projects and programs like ‘Mediating Multilingualism’ could contribute significantly towards that direction.

Even as the scholars began working on majority-minority relations, and democratic norms that could ensure their healthy exchanges, it became clear that the whole world would have to devise means of living in a multilingual situation in a large number of geographies. Given that reality, the present project would also explore if such plural contexts could be mediated in some manner. Also, could a grammar of mediation be drafted that will be eclectic enough to alter itself and its mediation strategies? 

‘Mediating Multilingualism’ project would not necessarily have answers to all questions and doubts that may arise on its pathway but would work to raise new issues, suggest ways-out and come up with means of identifying tamed and soluble problems as well as catalogue a set of wicked problems.  

In this direction, sharing and collaborating with others interested in languages and cultures on the margin, and on testing various ethno-linguistic methodologies such as endangered languages documentation and video-ethnography was thought as an important part of our agenda. 

India is an ideal and natural partner of multicultural Europe, and especially highly diversified UK in this project because of its vibrant linguistic diversity and its strong need to preserve linguistic and cultural identities in all these countries. University of Highlands and Islands (UHI), Scotland has been working steadfastly in preserving their local Gaelic tongue that is mainly spoken in the highlands and islands of western Scotland and doing its best to prevent this heritage language from going extinct. Similarly, at the Amity University Haryana (AUH), Gurgaon (India), the Amity Centre for Linguistic Studies (ACLiS) has been working to address language endangerment issues by networking with the UGC-sponsored Centres for Endangered Languages (CFEL’s) in India and other similar organisations and projects such as SPPTEL (of CIIL, Mysore) and MTSI of the Registrar General of India (RGI).

An expert in Linguistics, Culture Studies & Translation, Singh is a Chair-Professor and Dean (Faculty of Arts), Amity University Haryana. He was the Director of CIIL, Mysore, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Singh had set up the National Translation Mission and taught at the Universities of Hyderabad, Delhi, South Gujarat, and MSU-Baroda. With seven collections of poems in Maithili and Bangla, six books of essays, twelve plays, he translated many and published 250 research papers and created 545 documentaries on the language, literature, and culture of Bangla, Tamil, Kannada, and Marathi. A poet-invitee at the Frankfurt Book Fair (2006), London Book Fair (2009), and Leader of Cultural Delegation of Writers to China (2007), Singh visited and lectured in Australia, Andorra, Bangladesh, Belgium, Caribbean Islands, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, UK, and the USA, and received several grants, awards and honors.  He received many awards and honors, including the coveted Sahitya Akademi Award 2017 for poetry. 

Singh’s latest book-length publications include Translation as Growth: Towards a theory of Language Development (2010; Longman-Pearson), an edited volume with Lesley Farrell & Ram Ashish Giri, titled English Language Education in South Asia: From Policy to Perspectives (2011; Cambridge University Press), and Cultures on the Margin: Guidelines for Fieldwork on Endangered Languages. (2018 with Rajib Chakraborty, Bidisha Bhattacharjee & Arimardan Kumar Tripathy) Centre for Endangered Languages, Visva-Bharati. His forthcoming book is: The Other India: View From Below (2021, jointly with Rajarshi Singh, being published by Sahitya Akademi, the National Academy of Letters.

GULAB CHAND

ESHA JAINITI 

Esha Jainiti has been the Dy. Director, Amity School of Communication at Amity University Haryana since 2012. As an Academic administrator, Faculty member, experienced television professional, she teaches Television Production, Films, Media Analysis and Development Communication to the PG and UG students. She has been responsible for innovative pedagogy solutions using technology (Flip classrooms, Online Quizzes, using phones to do stories are some examples). She has had International Collaborations (Invited 18 International journalists from IOR-ARC countries to campus). She has also facilitated student interactions with industry experts. Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai, Mr. Rajan Anandan, (MD, Google India), Ms. Paroma Choudhury (Soft Bank), Mr. Stan Dembinski, (Editor in Chief, Media India Group). She set up the Amity University Manesar Television Studio and is imparting live training using state of the art equipment. Earlier, she was a Senior Consultant, Broadcast Training (Editorial) at the NDTV Worldwide during 2010 -2012, where she trained editorial staff from the onset to launch of a channel, worked closely with existing International and Regional channels to streamline news workflows and make teams more efficient, assisted in planning content, and audited editorial departments. Before that she was a faculty member at the Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication (2009 -­‐ 2010) where she taught Broadcast Journalism, Television Production and Media Ethics. Between 2005 and 2009, she was the MD, EJSquare. She has also had experience as a Producer at NDTV (1996-2005). For two years, after her Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Hyderabad, she was a Consultant – Notre Dame Communication Center. Her undergraduate training in Political Science from the coveted Presidency College, Calcutta and her Film Appreciation training from FTII, Pune had also been very useful in her career as a media professional.

RUSHA MUDGAL

Dr Rusha Mudgal is a Media Educator and Researcher. At present, she is working as an Assistant professor at Amity School of Communication, AUH. She completed her PhD in Journalism and Mass Communication from Amity University Haryana in January 2020. The Title of her thesis was From Print to E-Newspaper: What Indian Readers Want. Her keen interest lies in the areas of New Media and Communication Research. She is consistently involved in understanding influences of new media technologies on communication processes in the Indian scenario. She has taught at various reputed institutions and colleges in Delhi/NCR at UG and PG level. 

RANA BEDI

Rana is a UGC-NET qualified scholar, a graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Amity University Haryana and a postgraduate in Mass Communication with specialization in Corporate Communication from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. In the beginning of her career, she worked extensively as a content writer in different media organisations and currently is pursuing PhD in Journalism and Mass Communication from Amity University Haryana. She believes that due to communication being at the core of her studies and work experience, she has a natural inclination towards languages and issues that the world is currently affronted with such as language endangerment. Her thesis titled ‘A Study of  Female Audience Reception of Mainstream Female Stand-up Comedies in India: A Contribution to Critical Discourse Analysis’ also analyses discourses from the lens of linguistics. She is someone who actively likes to engage with diverse media of different languages and cultures such as World Cinema and wishes to actively contribute in the preservation of India’s cultural diversity. She can be contacted on ranabedi10@gmail.com

TRISHITA NANDI

Trishita is a language enthusiast. She completed Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy in Linguistics in 2017 and 2019 respectively.  Her M.A dissertation topic was A Comparative study of the Classifiers in Bangla and Chinese and M.Phil thesis was titled Feluda Literary Translation: A Comparative Analysis of the Translated works from Bangla to English from Jadavpur University. She started working on Endangered Languages during her Masters course. She presented the paper titled Tense and Aspect of Toto Language at the 5th ELKL conference in February 2017. During her M.Phil course she joined CFEL Visva-Bharati as a Field Enumerator and worked as a Field Linguist at Nadia District, West Bengal in November 2018. She has also worked as a Field Assistant in the UGC sponsored Multilingual Urban Spaces Project at Linguistics Department, University of Calcutta. She also worked as an Executive of Linguistics and Content in the Artificial Intelligence department and the Marketing Department of an US based Company in 2019. Trishita has done an internship at the Society of Natural Languages and Technology Research, Kolkata. She is a theatre enthusiast and a trained Kathak and Bharatanatyam dancer.

DEBAJIT SHARMA

Dr. Debajit Sharma, is a researcher in the field of folklore and language documentation. He did his PhD on a tribe called “Karbi”. His thesis titled Following the Changing Trends in Fringe Villages: A Socio-cultural Investigation on Karbis of Kamrup District. He did his MA. in Cultural Studies from Tezpur Central University, Assam.  Debajit has years of experience in the field of ethnic studies and Language Documentation. He was the Recipient of DoRa International Scholarship, University of Tartu, Estonia in the Faculty of Philosophy as visiting Ph.D student. In 2015, he was working in CIIL, Mysore on various capacities for twelve long years and was involved in various research projects mostly related to language documentation and translation. His contribution to Sikkim Languages Documentation is specially enriching. Dr. Debajit Sharma was also a core member of the project ‘New Linguistic Survey of India’ (NLSI). He has 13 published research papers and edited an encyclopaedia. He is a regular writer on ethnic issues in his mother tongue, Assamese.

ANWITA MAITI

Dr. Anwita Maiti has earned her Ph.D titled Representation of Women in Select Indian Films, under the supervision of Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh, from The Centre for Culture Studies, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. She has pursued her Integrated Masters in Political Science (2008-2013) from the University of Hyderabad and has received M.Phil in Culture Studies (2013-2015) from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan where her guide was Prof. Amrit Sen and her dissertation was named Feminism in the Movies of Aparna Sen and Shyam Benegal: A Comparative Study. Her broad field of research is on women’s issues; in particular, how films, visual arts and theatre, especially in the Indian context, have depicted and celebrated womanhood and how their representation of women have been seminal in shaping people’s mindsets.