From Hindi to Urdu. A Social and Political History
This book is the first of its kind on the socio-political history of Urdu. It analyses the historiography of the language — narratives about its names, linguistic ancestry, place of birth — and relates it to the politics of identity-construction among the Hindus and Muslims of India during the last two centuries. More importantly, a historical account of the use of Urdu in social domains such as employment, education, printing and publishing, radio, films, and television etc. has been provided for the first time. These accounts are related to the expression of Hindu and Muslim identity-politics during the last two centuries.
Evolution of Urdu from the language of the laity, both Hindus and Muslims, of the Indian subcontinent during the period between 15th—18th centuries to its standardization into two languages: Persianized Urdu and Sanskritized Hindi are highlighted here. The writer looks at narratives of the names, theories of genealogy, and places of origin of the language in relation to the political imperatives of identity-politics of Hindus and Muslims during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a nutshell, historiography is analyzed with reference to its political and ideological dimensions—and a fresh analysis regarding the linguistic history of Urdu is provided.
Pluricentric Languages and Non-Dominant Varieties Worldwide: New pluricentric languages-old problems
This volume comprises 30 selected papers that were presented at the “5th World Conference of Pluricentric Languages and their non-dominant Varieties (WCPCL) held at the University of Mainz (Germany) in 2017. The authors come from 15 countries and deal with 14 pluricentric languages and 31 (non-dominant) varieties around the world. The number of known PLCLs has again been extended. There are now 43 PLCLs in all. Apart from a large number of papers on Spanish, French and Portuguese, “new” and little researched PLCLs are also presented in the volume: Albanian, Hungarian, Malay, Persian, Somali and Romanian.