Deepika Padmanabhan on Language, Identity, and Nation-Building in South India

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I spoke with Deepika Padmanabhan, who's a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. Her research focuses on nationalism, language and self-determination with a regional focus in South Asia. We discussed her job market paper, everyday imposition language promotion as a nation building strategy in Southern India. We talked about how the exposure to dominant national languages like English and Hindi impacts the identity of subnational regional speakers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the politics of language in South Asia, the instrumental versus symbolic characteristics of regional languages and much more. 

Recorded September 11th, 2024.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:08) - Grand Tamasha

(00:02:47) - Linguistic Diversity and National Identity

(00:03:55) - History and Politics of Multilingualism in India

(00:06:20) - Language as a Nation-Building Tool with Putative Effects

(00:08:53) - Experiencing the Hierarchy of National and Subnational Identities Through Language

(00:11:51) - Observing the Discriminatory Effects of Linguistic Imposition

(00:15:37) - Bilingualism or Diglossia

(00:18:03) - Differences in the Political and Economic Valences of Hindi and English

(00:21:18) - Migration and Language Politics

(00:22:35) - Linguistic Pluralism in Relation to National Identity and Growing Nativism

(00:25:39) - Hindi as the Site of Political and Economic Tensions

(00:30:45) - Dialects of Local Languages Provoking a Subnational Identity

(00:34:26) - A Linguistic Origin Story

(00:38:33) - Politics in Tamil Film

(00:43:20) - The Future of Linguistic Diversity with Advancements in Technology

(00:45:15) - Outro