Language Ideology and Internal Migration: A Survey Experiment in Southern India

• In Event: Behavioral Effects of Language

Abstract

In this paper, I explore whether and how exposure to practice of the dominant language of a state affects the political identities and ideological preferences of individuals of ethnicities associated with non-dominant languages. I do so through the case of Southern Indian states and focus on exposure to the practice of Hindi, the dominant language, among bilingual and multilingual non-Hindi native language speakers. Contemporary labour migration flows from Hindi-speaking states, which tend to be poorer, to the non-Hindi states of Southern India. I focus on two states: Kannada speaking Karnataka and Tamil speaking Tamil Nadu which have both received a high volume of migrants due to the ascendency of the knowledge economy.

Through an online survey experiment with recruitment of high-skill employees of Information technology and multinational companies via LinkedIn advertising, bilingual and multilingual respondents are randomly exposed to non-political vignettes in English, Hindi, and their native language. I find that this language practice, that is exposure to and engagement with a language, leads to greater support for identities and ideologies associated with that corresponding language. Thus, language plays a significant role in the convergence of national identities (both groups identify as more Indian when exposed to Hindi) and can also affect some ideological preferences (exposure to Hindi impacts views on redistribution, religion and caste justice in Tamil but not Kannada individuals).

I argue that the varying responses to Hindi among Tamil and Kannada speakers can be understood in the context of long running linguistic nationalism movements in the two states that centre around opposition to Hindi, but with differing associated politics. These political associations, or language ideologies, are socially and culturally constructed and the product of historical bundling of language with political and social issues. I show that while the Tamil nationalist movement was a mass movement led by intermediate castes and espoused political atheism as well as caste and class based social justice, the Kannada language movement was initiated as a literary, upper caste movement that is now associated with consumer rights, cultural chauvinism in terms of media, and anti-migrant rhetoric.

Therefore, in this paper, I examine the impact of internal migration of non-native language groups in receiving regions, and how that might differ based on the histories of linguistic nationalism, and therefore language ideologies, of receiving regions.

Author

• Deepika Padmanabhan, Harvard University