SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Conducted in collaboration with the Tower Hamlets based community organisation Osmani Trust, this sociolinguistic ethnography responds to local concerns that Sylheti is undergoing language shift to English. Existing studies have tended to focus on Sylheti as a discrete language, linked to individual identities and attitudes, or on intergenerational language transmission. Drawing on the concept of spatial and communicative repertoires, this study instead explores the relationship between Sylheti and place. The research sites: streets, shops, markets and cafes, were selected by the participants, all adults with links to Sylheti and Tower Hamlets. The use of ethnographic walking methods and ethnographic linguistic landscaping strengthens the theoretical focus by pushing the analysis away from individual speakers’ competencies and identities towards a more socially situated understanding of sociolinguistic place-making. Findings show Sylheti as a part of a constantly changing web of communication resources and ideologies, rather than a discrete language in decline. Dispensing with dominant discourses which tie minority languages in the UK to a faraway country of origin, I consider Sylheti as a ‘local practice’ (Pennycook, 2010). Further findings suggest that language and place interact through social practice and are mutually constitutive. Legacies of anti-racist struggle in Tower Hamlets reproduce a space of resistance where Sylheti can be used freely and this freedom in turn reinforces Tower Hamlets, or parts of it, as a space of sociolinguistic resistance. The data reveal a linguistic energy and dynamism seldom acknowledged nor referred to in policy documents or in dominant models of language education, which tend to focus on lack and deficit. By suggesting that Sylheti is a crucial element of Tower Hamlets life, the study problematises two powerful discourses: the frequently articulated concern among Sylheti speakers in the UK that irreversible language shift towards English is underway; and the intensifying political discourse that English is the only language to index social cohesion and belonging.