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Rewriting the past and reimagining the future: The social life of a Tamil heritage language industry
Article first published online: 11 NOV 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01336.x
© 2011 by the American Anthropological Association
Additional Information
How to Cite
NEELA DAS, S. (2011), Rewriting the past and reimagining the future: The social life of a Tamil heritage language industry. American Ethnologist, 38: 774–789. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01336.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 11 NOV 2011
- Article first published online: 11 NOV 2011
- accepted May 11, 2011 , final version submitted May 8, 2011
- Abstract
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Keywords:
- [heritage language industry;
- temporality;
- urban multilingualism;
- globalization;
- Tamil diaspora;
- Montreal]
ABSTRACT
Globally circulating discourses associated with heritage language industries often promote temporally dichotomous views of spoken and written languages that deny coeval status to linguistic minorities. In the multilingual city of Montreal, Quebec, where Sri Lankan refugees work to preserve a classicalist style of Written Tamil and Indian immigrants work to revitalize a modernist style of Spoken Tamil, this division of labor is undermined by elders and youth who, in mixing colloquial and literary styles of Tamil, French, and English, reframe curricular and nationalist discourses of language loss and degeneration into more empowering narratives of developmental progress and ethnolinguistic identification.