Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION AND CHANGE IN URBAN INDIA
with modern urban societies in most parts of the world, social boundaries are
becoming increasingly diffuse and contact between people of diverse social
backgrounds is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
This paper reports some findings from a sociolinguistic study of the
choices made by Marathi-speaking adolescents in urban Pune between
standard and non-standard features of the language. Specifically, the purpose
here will be to assess the roles of caste and class membership in dialect shift
in an urban Indian context. But first I shall review the sociological notions of
‘caste’ and ‘class’.
2. Conceptual formulation of caste and class
Despite the deluge of literature that has been produced on the ‘extreme form
of social stratification’ (Dumont 1988: 3) found in India, only two scholars,
as far as I am aware, have challenged the universal view that caste is a
unilateral, hierarchical principle of social stratification. Das (1982) and
Gupta (1993) have both challenged Dumont’s conceptualisation of caste as
an all-encompassing hierarchy. Here I summarise only the main arguments
which have emerged.
Continuous hierarchies are built around a single criterion which is
shared to a greater or lesser extent by all those who occupy that hierarchy.
To borrow Gupta’s illustration, a foreman on the shop floor is not a
manager, but is nearer to a manager than an ordinary worker is (1993:116).
Within the organisation of the factory these relative positions of authority
are undisputed. Members of a society can be ranked on a class continuum
using the single criterion of income, land or wealth; they can be assigned to
a particular stratum which can be read off a hierarchical scale. Middle class,
lower middle class, working class, etc. are the various arbitrary demarcations
on the scale employed by the analyst for purposes of a specific analysis.
Discrete categories, unlike continuous hierarchies, separate units into
exclusive categories. In a caste system there exists no single criterion the
possession of which makes one a Brahmin, and the lack of which makes
another a Maratha (a non-Brahmin high caste) 1 . There exist multiple caste
1 The caste names used in this study are as follows:
High castes, i,.e. having high social status in the traditional caste order:
1. Brahmin (the priestly caste) 2. Marathas (the warrior caste, who were also the landed gentry in the Marathi
region).
Low castes:
3. Backward castes or BC (which is the term used in official government terminology for the touchable non-
Brahmin castes. These were the artisans and craftsmen in the old order). 4. Scheduled Group (includes the
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