Wednesday
04
February 2026
2:30 - 4:00 PM IST
Location
Room 331, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
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Notions around Languages: Communities, Power and Politics
Arts and Sciences Research Seminar Series
Sowmya Dechamma
Professor
Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Hyderabad
Speaker
This talk will critically look at the various taken-for-granted notions around languages – dialect vs language, orality vs writing, ideas of multilingualism, nationalism and language, and mother tongues -- which have an overwhelming presence in popular perceptions and within academia. The talk attempts to demystify the above and related concerns around language. In addition to these, the talk will analyse the desire for English, not just among minoritised communities but also its dominant presence among the privileged by looking at the power that marks the complex relationship between languages and the communities that speak them. I do this by drawing on examples of language-community relationships from India, focusing on Kodava in Karnataka as well as in the context of Gujarat.
Speaker
Sowmya Dechamma
Sowmya Dechamma CC teaches at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad. She teaches and researches in the areas of Cultural Discourses in Contemporary India, Translation Studies, Literatures of India, Minority Language and Politics, and Kodava performative cultures. Her articles have appeared in international journals and national newspapers. She taught at the City University of New York as part of her Fulbright during 2019 – 20 and was a Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Southampton during 2010-11. Her recent book Languages of Minority: Orality, Translation and Desiring English was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
