Ajit Mohanty

Jawaharlal Nehru University | JNU · Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies

Children grow up in societies varying on a continuum between monolingualism and multilingualism. Children from Indigenous/Tribal, Minority and Minoritized communities are subjected to the processes of discrimination and stigmatisation of their languages, and glorification of more dominant languages. The processes of development of childhood multili...

A parallel education industry largely unaddressed in national language education policy framings, English medium education (EME) in India thrives and is buoyed by the neoliberal constructs of the individual/institutional agency and responsibility for economic success. Most studies on Indian English language education place the inequities perpetuate...

Research on cognitive consequences of bi-/multilingualism, including Indian studies, shows that multilingualism is a human resource. Analysis of psycholinguistic processes underlying multilingualism confirms its positive benefits in respect of cognition, creativity, metalinguistic ability, reading and literacy-related skills despite some variations...

The historical appraisal of psychology in modern India in this book seeks to reinforce an association between pre-modern and modern psychology rejecting the characterization of the pre-modern Indian understanding of human mind as “philosophical” and argues that the disconnect with the traditional views led to dominance of Euro-American psychology....

This chapter looks into multilingualism in India and outcomes of contact between different linguistic groups. Based on studies in Bodo-Assamese and Kui-Odia contact outcomes, the chapter seeks some answers to the question “Why do some languages get marginalised and others are assertively maintained in situations of language contact?”

This book is a multidisciplinary analysis of the meaning and dynamics of multilingualism from the perspectives of multilingual communities in the margins, who are trapped in a vicious circle of disadvantage. It analyses the social, psychological and sociolinguistic processes of linguistic dominance and hierarchical relationship among languages, dis...

The Indian subcontinent constitutes a highly diverse linguistic area, with over 750 languages belonging to nine language families. A large proportion of these languages are endangered. Multilingualism and language-in-education policies and practices in the subcontinent are affected by a hierarchical relationship of languages characterized by a doub...

The Indian subcontinent constitutes a highly diverse linguistic area, with over 750 languages belonging to nine language families. A large proportion of these languages are endangered. Multilingualism and language-in-education policies and practices in the subcontinent are affected by a hierarchical relationship of languages characterized by a doub...

The hierarchical positioning of languages in the South Asian multilingual societies leads to language shift, marginalization and loss of less powerful or weakened languages and capability deprivation and poverty of the language communities. The linguistic double divide in South Asia is reflected in the role of English in fostering a hierarchical pe...

The chapter engages with language policies in the post-independent India, which, it finds, have uncritically employed the colonial categories like vernacular language, dialect and tongue to categorize Indian languages. This has impacted on education policy and practices in India, particularly in respect of education of the tribal and other minority...

Language is simultaneously an integral aspect of and a major influence on cultural processes. At an individual level it is evident that languages affect peoples' worldview, which in turn also influences the use of languages. Linguistic and cultural diversity often go together. There are 6,000 to 7,600 languages in the world today, according to vari...

The paper is based on a longitudinal research undertaken in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha to study the impact of Multilingual Education.

Features of Indian multilingualism are discussed to show that, despite several positive forces favoring maintenance of minority languages, languages are subjected to inequality and discrimination. It is argued that multilingualism in India, as in other South Asian countries, is hierarchical in nature, characterized by a double divide - one between...

The book deals with how using several languages in education can contribute to greater social justice. The book shows that multilingual education is just for all. Experts from all continents who have contributed to this book show how mother-tongue based multilingual education does enable indigenous/tribal minority and marginalised children to succe...

The study attempted an understanding of the cognitive process involved in appreciation of history and the developmental pattern of the same. A test of Historical Understanding (HU) was constructed consisting of items which were similar to historical situations, but real historical episodes were not included in order to avoid any effect of prior kno...

The principles for enabling children to become fully proficient multilinguals through schooling are well known. Even so, most indigenous/tribal, minority and marginalised children are not provided with appropriate mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MLE) that would enable them to succeed in school and society. In this book experts from arou...

This state-of-the-art volume provides an interdisciplinary overview of current topics and research foci in the areas of linguistic diversity and migration-induced multilingualism and aims to lay the foundations for interdisciplinary work and the development of a common methodological framework for the field. Linguistic diversity and migration-induc...

Multilingual societies are characterised by complex relationship between languages and linguistic groups. There are several sociolinguistic and social psychological features on which multilingual societies have been held to be quite different from the dominant monolingual societies (Mohanty, 1994a, 2004). Individual and group bi- or multilingualism...

Eighty-two super cyclone victims from nine villages of Erasama block in Orissa were interviewed to analyse their perception of post-cyclone relief and rehabilitation programmes, self-confidence, initiatives, future plans and causal attribution. The findings revealed that the villagers had awareness of various relief measures and had received the be...

Bilinguals' superiority over unilinguals on cognitive, linguistic, and academic achievement measures has been explained in terms of a metalinguistic hypothesis that suggests that use of 2 or more languages endows the language users with special awareness of objective properties of language and enables them to analyze linguistic input more effective...

A number of studies comparing the cognitive, linguistic and academic performance and the sociolinguistic integration of bilingual and monolingual Kond tribals have been discussed to show that Kui-Oriya bilingualism, based on the maintenance of the indigenous Kui language, has positive consequences compared to Oriya monolingualism, resulting from a...

40 3–4 yr old and 40 5–6 yr old Hindi-speaking children completed a test of syntactic development and a measure of environmental deprivation. Both receptive and expressive syntactic ability increased significantly with age. Males had significantly higher expressive scores. The 2 syntactic ability measures were significantly intercorrelated and tend...

Investigated the relationship between metalinguistic and cognitive ability of 120 bilingual and unilingual children who were 6, 8, and 10 yrs of age. Metalinguistic ability was determined from Ss' abilities to perceive rhymes in language, judge the appropriateness of corrections of others' speech, define words, substitute symbols, understand arbitr...

Traces the development of psycholinguistics as a discipline, beginning with W. Wundt's theory of language which suggested that the interaction between the "inner" cognitive process and the "outer" sensory-motor organization of external events can be better understood through a study of the structure of language. However, according to Wundt, underst...

Studies on cognitive consequences of bilingualism have often confounded the effects of bilingualism and culture by comparing monolinguals and bilinguals belonging to different cultures. The Kond tribal society in Orissa provides an ideal setting for an investigation, since the bilingual and monolingual Konds share a common culture. A test of metali...

60 preschool Hindi-speaking children, randomly assigned to 3 context conditions, were asked to describe 24 pictures depicting locative relationships—under, front, behind, and above—between pairs of nouns. Preceding each locative picture there were three context cards showing the subject of the locative proposition in the subject-context condition,...

Six high- and six low-bias lexically ambiguous sentences and their unambiguous control pairs, divided into three lists, were presented to 30 male undergraduates, whose heart rate (HR) was recorded. Since HR is sensitive to complexity of cognitive activity, it was suggested that, compared to an unambiguous control condition, the degree of HR change...

Argues that the genetic and social variables were so confounded in S. Scarr and R. A. Weinberg's article on Black children adopted by White families that the results are consistent with virtually any theory of race differences in IQ. It is difficult to see any scientific or applied value in transracial adoption studies.