On Language and Its Rules: History in Language

The Merriam–Webster dictionary defines language as “the words, their pronunciation and the methods of combining them, used and understood by a community.” The very definition of language implies that its primary function is to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings to our communities. An infant picks up this skill from the tender age of six months. It would just be incoherent babble at that time but in accordance with the definition given by Merriam–Webster, it could still be classified as language because the infant is trying to convey a certain message to his parents, even though the message might be as inane as “Change my diaper, Dad.”

Further, the history of mankind has been a witness to the fact that language is very dynamic. Whether it is English, French, Greek, or Zulu, all languages have evolved, adapted, and expanded to cater to the changing and ever increasing needs of mankind. Every year, around 1000 words are added to the English dictionary alone. Around 2000 slang words are also invented and added only in Oxford Dictionaries Online (Datoo, 2013). The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, never removes a single word even if it’s no longer in use (Datoo, 2013).  Slang words, as though in defiance, also become an integral part of the English language. This makes it almost impossible to define the scope of a language, begging the question “Who has the right to define or limit a language?” Is it the stodgy old men working for Merriam–Webster occasionally swearing (which is not considered to be a part of language) or is it the people who use these words to express themselves? I would like pose a third option that would render the above two choices obsolete. I believe that language should not be constrained or standardized because language is a culmination of experiences and a non-standard language can lead us to unexplored heights of creativity. This blog series will explore various reasons that support the non-standardization of language.

During British Imperialism, a young British judge called William Jones was stationed in India. He made an attempt to learn Sanskrit in order to effectively enforce British rules in India. While learning Sanskrit, he noticed certain similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin which pointed to a possibility that many of the Indo-European languages emerged from a common source. Some historians further postulated that these Indo-European people were descendants of the same race and found archaeological evidence supporting their theory. This is a rather detailed example of how language contains history at the macro level. Similarly, language is repository of experience at the grass root level too. It is a well-known fact that the attitudes, behaviors, personality traits, and other psychological characteristics of a person are influenced by peers, parents, media, and other socializing agents like teachers and schools. Language, as established before, is also an integral part of an individual. Hence, it cannot be spared by the pervasive influence of the environment.

English is my second language. I did my high school education in India and pursued my college degree in the Unites States. My English accent is a mixture of Indian and American accent. However, since India was a British colony and British English is widely spoken here, some British accent also seamlessly slithers in. Therefore, a person’s language is like his memoir. It contains the much valuable history of his race, his gender and pivotal moments of his life. James Baldwin (1979) explores the above given claim in his essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” He writes, “Subsequently, the slave was given, under the eye, and the gun, of his master, Congo Square, and the Bible–or, in other words, and under those conditions, the slave began the formation of a black church, and it is within this unprecedented tabernacle that Black English began to be formed. This was not, merely, as in the European example, the adoption of a foreign tongue, but an alchemy that transformed ancient elements into a new language” (Baldwin, 1979, Para. 7). Baldwin further explains how Black English was a product of the cruel history of slavery and racial discrimination. Similarly, a person’s language is an embodiment of his past including all his toils and rewards. By dismissing his language, one callously dismisses his history.

 Coming up next in this series – On Language and it Rules: Why context matters?

Prachi Bhuptani

Altruistic Economics

Recent research in economics has unravelled a mountain of scientific evidence that has previously remained unexplored. Indeed, the methods in the field of economics are markedly changing, as well as the topics that economists are dealing with. A cursory glance at published articles dealing with experiments, psychology, sociology, and political science in top-ranked economics journals will suffice to grasp recent shifts in economic thinking: something that we often overlook when immersed in a full-time formal degree in economics. The purpose of this article is to understand how expanding our current economic perspective is only beneficial for achieving a better picture of everything that is economics.

First, it must be said that intertwining fields such as psychology and political science with economics is not exceptionally novel, in that it has been an active means of economic analysis under the aegis of behavioural economics and political economy. In fact, areas like mathematics (e.g., game theory) and statistics (e.g., econometrics) have contributed much more to our understanding of economic issues than others; so clearly economics as a social science has borrowed significantly from other sciences. For anyone who is thoroughly dissatisfied with learning the assumptions of any economic model (which, in their own right, are absolutely justified in theory) might immediately take a shine to modelling economic behaviour using psychology or evolutionary biology, since it partly consists of appealing to one’s sense of intuition in analysing economics. Recent studies in behavioural economics include studying the role of moral and religious codes in dishonest behaviour such as cheating on a test (Ariely, 2013), ‘nudging’ people to make choices that are optimal in their own right (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), and how social norms and social preferences drive our selfish (and often altruistic) decisions (Binmore, 2010).

Second, we see that ‘sister’ fields such as experimental economics have assumed importance owing to their utility in testing behavioural economics theories, as well as falsifying existing, traditional economic theory (Kagel & Roth, 1995). Experiments have become particularly popular in playing out game theoretic-situations for human subjects (e.g., testing if the prisoner’s dilemma is indeed a dilemma for people). Some experiments in economics have gone far beyond the comforts of the laboratory (which gives a researcher the advantage of having complete control over how the decision is presented) to the field; this necessarily requires more resources to organize, but has higher external validity (Harrison & List, 2004). Natural (or field) experiments have become wildly popular in economics as they allow one to assess policy impacts (such as Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Clearly, experiments (despite their complexities) indeed show the path to a new understanding of how we make decisions in real life.

In the Indian context of economics research (such as Hatekar & Kulkarni, 2013), it would be a grave error to say that there is a dearth of good research. Universities, think-tanks, and other research institutions have contributed vastly to the present research scenario in India. There are also extensive datasets that offer crucial insights into the state of the economy—both at the macro and micro level.

Finally, we can say that the state of flux for economics research (both in India, and world over) is a good indication of a belief in collaboration, scientific rigour, and a system designed to (mostly) ensure that the (usually) best research survives. The inter-and-multi-disciplinary approach to economics will only give us richer insights into the way we function, and ultimately how society (or an economy) runs itself. While many important issues are already the focus of mainstream economics research, there is treasure everywhere, waiting to be found.

Anirudh Tagat

Gender Disguise in the Indian Entertainment Industry: Cross-Dressing

Sandra Bem had emphasized that the only factor that makes someone or something male or female is their genitalia. Thus, a toy truck, a task, profession or an outfit cannot be either “male” or “female”.

Earlier, when women were not allowed to act, men would cross-dress as women. In the first motion picture, Raja Harishchandra (1913), the female lead of Taramati –Harischandra's wife – was played by a male actors Anna Salunkhe and Phalke's son Bhalachandra. Since acting was considered to be taboo, men dressed up as women. However, the rationale underlying it was merely convenience and to have female representatives as counterparts.

Cross-dressing in the real world is an attribute of the transgender community, who have emerged essentially to claim themselves as independent identities not bound by rigid gender stereotypes.  Cross-dressing in Indian society is an attempt by men to wear clothes and other accessories commonly associated with women in Indian culture. The purposes for which it has been used in media involve disguise, comfort, and most importantly to generate humour. The idea of cross-dressing has by and large been ridiculed in the entertainment world and hardly any attempts have been made to project cross-dressers as entities independent from cultural stereotypes.

It may be easy to accept when a woman dresses as a man with attire such as a trouser and a shirt. In fact, it is the dress code of many women working in the corporate sector. A woman in stereotypical male clothing is hardly ever found out to be unique or striking. A similar situation when emulated by a man becomes perhaps the most salient aspect of his appearance and creates perceptions that are difficult to rule out. It is ironical to see how women in the real world have restrictions imposed on them in various arenas. But in the reel world, restrictions imposed on a man's dressing are very apparent. Thus, with a shift from real to reel, there are changes in gender-reversal in the area of “unacceptabilities”. Cross-dressing in the Indian entertainment industry has been prevalent since more than ten decades and has been a subject of mass appeal.  Since a man dressing as a woman is considered to be so unusual, in the contemporary entertainment world it has been highly celebrated.

The role of Kamal Hassan, as Chachi, in Chachi 420 (1997) has used stereotypes to make an impact, because as a male, he could have never achieved what he wanted, that is, his wife and daughter. Chachi’s persuasion for Amrish Puri works marvellously well but Hassan's persuasion would have drastically failed. Being disguised as a woman has repeatedly been used to evoke sympathy from other men. Women have been viewed as soft targets who can use their so-called gentle prowess to have their way with the dominating male community.

In some movies [like Ritesh Deshmukh’s character in Apna Sapna Money Money (2006)], males disguised as females are used merely as distractions to hinder other male characters from achieving their goals. They portray features that could be associated with femme fatale – a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms entrap her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. This portrayal of a woman as a distraction is contradictory to the oft-quoted saying that “Behind every successful man is a woman.” Thus, what emerges is perhaps the biggest drawback of cross-dressing – sexualization of women. Importantly, when a man cross-dresses, it suddenly makes him very desirable to other men in the drama. This probably establishes the idea that beauty is essentially the prerogative of women and when cross-dressed, even ugly men become highly coveted. This has been very well exemplified in the movie Aunty No. 1 (1998), where Govinda as a woman, wins the affection of three men ready to woo “her” in every way possible.

The role of Dadi in Comedy Nights with Kapil (2013) exemplifies the rather unusual character of an alcoholic and seductive Indian Dadi who has extraordinary power and strength, showcasing her masculine prowess and is desperate to woo the male celebrities that participate in that show. Since it is a male (disguised as a woman) seducing men, the effect of seduction is toned down to the element of humour. At the same time, we could say that the character of Dadi is both progressive and regressive. Her humour makes the notion of an alcoholic woman acceptable. She is able to break the shackles and stereotypes associated with a woman only because she biologically is not a woman. 

Cross-dressing has often been used an escape mechanism to surreptitiously enter in the male-prohibited areas. They disguise primarily to achieve what they could not have achieved as a male. In a television series called Mrs. Pammi Pyareyal (2013), the protagonist cross-dresses to get accommodation into a home where only couples are allowed to live. She is shown as a beautiful lady who is very intelligent and can solve almost any home-making problem. However, the intelligence is that of a man who can skillfully combat relational issues but is only acknowledged in form of a housewife who is stereotypically very high on interpersonal intelligence.

In most comedy shows, when male characters dress up as women, they present themselves with some dramatic differences, such as unwaxed legs, very wide hips or large busts. Such appearances only reinforce the stereotypical notions of beauty in our culture. Also, the attire of a woman in revealing clothes is used mainly to titillate the opposite sex. Disguised humour is used as an instrument to assert the notion of beauty without brains.

It is really fascinating to see how cross-dressing has evolved in the Indian entertainment industry. What started off merely as an availability phenomenon, has gradually taken the form of sexualization of women. Femininity has become associated with a “safety escape” from danger as people are generally less suspicious of women committing higher order crimes; cross-dressing is more of a safety valve.. Thus femininity is mainly “performed” under many such stereotypical facades reinforcing negative stereotypes of womanhood in Indian culture.

It has been proposed that within every man there is a woman and within every woman there is a man. So where is the man and where is the woman?

Pooja Gala

References

Dasgupta, S. Das. (1996). Feminist consciousness in woman-centered Hindi films. The Journal of Popular Culture, 30(1), 173–189. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1996.00173.x/abstract

Datta, S. (2000). Globalisation and representations of women in Indian cinema. Social Scientist, 28(3), 71–82.

Mcmillin, D. C. (2002). Ideologies of gender on television in India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 9(1), 1–26. http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/9/1/1.abstract

Moorti, S. (2013). Shifting contours of Indian womanhood in popular Hindi cinema. The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies.

Rao, L. (1989). Woman in Indian films—A paradigm of continuity and change. Media, Culture & Society, 11, 443–458.

Tere, N. S. (2012). Gender reflections in mainstream Hindi cinema. Students’ Research Global Media Journal, 3(1), 1–9. http://www.caluniv.ac.in/global-mdia-journal/Students%27%20Research/SR4%20NIDHI.pdf