The Travails of the English Language - From Obscurity to Empowerment

Abstract

The academic intelligentsia has been abuzz with a new found occupation-the Subaltern Studies-in the recent decades. It has drawn our attention to the outwardly quiet, but potentially volatile fault lines of our culture, which invariably run along the borders of different (and may be even irreconcilable) group interests. As he peeps in to these fissures, the watchful eye of the academic identifies many a hitherto unobserved sites of oppression; History, text, discourse, media, film, art and literature have all shed their innocent apolitical stance to emerge as sites of conflicts. Another important addition to this litany of shame is language.