• The global translinguistics of Bengali Muslims

    Author(s):
    Shakil Rabbi (see profile)
    Date:
    2022
    Group(s):
    LSL Language and Society, TC Postcolonial Studies
    Subject(s):
    Folklore, Conversion, South Asia, Literary form, Islam, Language and languages, Bengali literature, Popular culture--Study and teaching
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/anzp-4k68
    Abstract:
    This chapter presents a discussion of a literary genre called puthis, a premodern tradition of religious stories and plays in what is now Bangladesh, as an example of vernacular cosmopolitanism in an Asian context. The language of this genre, called Dubasha, is a “mixed language mode” (Seely 2008) characterized by the replacement of Sanskrit vocabulary – tatsamas – with Persian and Arabic. Such replacement creates heteroglossic utterances indexing its Islamic character and popularizing purpose. Sanskrit lexicon and the tatsama register are eschewed in the genre, I argue, because of rhetorical and religious reasons even though they represent the sadhu bhasa – the literate register – associated with local literary tradition. The heteroglossic feature of this genre functions to constitute the umma – the Islamic community of believers – and to communicate an Islamic cosmology to the converted Muslim population. The chapter ends with an argument of what can be learned about language as a social and rhetorical resource from this premodern tradition of global translinguistics practiced in Asia.
    Notes:
    Part of an edited collection
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Book chapter    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    8 months ago
    License:
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