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‘Below English Line’: An ethnographic exploration of class and the English language in post-liberalization India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2018

SAZANA JAYADEVA
SAZANA JAYADEVA*
Affiliation:
Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany Email: Sazana.Jayadeva@giga-hamburg.de
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Abstract

Anthropological studies of India's post-liberalization middle classes have tended to focus mainly on the role of consumption behaviour in the constitution of this class group. Building on these studies, and taking class as an object of ethnographic enquiry, I argue that, over the last 20 years, class dynamics in the country have been significantly altered by the unprecedentedly important and complex role that the English language has come to play in the production and reproduction of class. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork—conducted at commercial spoken-English training centres, schools, and corporate organizations in Bangalore—I analyse the processes by which this change in class dynamics has occurred, and how it is experienced on the ground. I demonstrate how, apart from being a valuable type of class cultural capital in its own right, proficiency in English has come to play a key role in the acquisition and performance of other important forms of capital associated with middle-class identity. As a result, being able to demonstrate proficiency in English has come to be experienced as a critical element in claiming and maintaining a space in the middle class, regardless of the other types of class cultural capital a person possesses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 576 - 608
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 From her speech at the Regional Institute of English's All India Seminar on ‘Second Language Teacher Education: Issues and Challenges’ in February 2012.

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11 A small percentage of state schools offer instruction in one of the eight ‘mother tongues’ that the state recognizes as belonging to its major linguistic minorities.

12 Government of Karnataka, ‘Education in Karnataka State, 2012–2013’, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. June 2013, http://www.schooleducation.kar.nic.in/databank/analyticalreport1213_eng.pdf, [accessed 31 October 2017.]

13 I worked as an English trainer at two ETCs, and conducted interviews and some participant observation at ten others. Similarly, I worked as a conversational-English teacher at two schools (one government-run and one private), and conducted interviews and some participant observation at 20 others. I also conducted fieldwork at three workplaces in the city that were running English classes for their employees: a multinational bank, a multinational IT consulting company, and a reputable private hospital in the city. At the bank, I observed a week of English communication skills classes being conducted for employees who were about to start working at the bank's call centre, and conducted interviews with the trainers. At the IT company, I taught an 80-hour English communication course for 20 newly recruited hardware engineers. At the hospital, I observed a spoken English course being conducted by a trainer from a popular ETC for some of the hospital's clerical staff.

14 All text that appears in italics was spoken in Kannada; words that do not appear in italics were spoken in English.

15 In order to protect my interlocutors’ anonymity, I have used pseudonyms and also changed certain details of people's stories. I have used the real names of people and organizations only in cases where I have written about things that are in the public domain.

16 Dickey describes people using the English word ‘normal’ when speaking in Tamil, in much the same way that my interlocutors used it (Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’). Both Dickey's and my interlocutors used the word to mean ‘average’.

17 Those among my interlocutors who had attended relatively elite schools and were proficient in English made an entirely different set of distinctions between the different types of English spoken in the city.

18 The kind of English a school was viewed as being able to teach its students was a major factor parents took into account when selecting a school for their children. My interlocutors categorized and ranked schools in various ways, using terms like ‘convent school’, ‘fully English-medium’, ‘hi-fi’, ‘international’ to designate the ones they imagined would equip students with a good level of English proficiency. The vast majority of schools at which it was imagined hi-fi English was used and taught were not affordable to my interlocutors. Most selected a school for their children which they felt was good for their ‘level’. Similarly, when enquirers came to ETCs, the English of the counsellors and trainers they met played a big role in their decision to enrol for a course. While a counsellor/trainer who spoke ‘local’ English could damage business, equally, I was told by more than one ETC proprietor, staff who spoke ‘hi-fi’ English could intimidate and scare away prospective students.

19 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’; Jeffrey, C., Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2010Google Scholar; Jeffrey, C., ‘Timepass: Youth, Class, and Time Among Unemployed Young Men in India’. American Ethnologist, vol. 37, issue 3, 2010, pp. 465–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P., and Jeffery, R., Degrees Without Freedom: Education, Masculinities, and Unemployment in North India, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2008Google Scholar; Donner, ‘Children are Capital, Grandchildren are Interest’; Fernandes, ‘Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India’.

20 Donner, ‘Children are Capital, Grandchildren are Interest’.

21 Jeffrey, Timepass; Jeffrey, ‘Timepass’.

22 LaDousa, Hindi is Our Ground, English is Our Sky.

23 Employment in the ITES sector includes jobs in call centres, back office operations, medical transcription, medical billing, and coding, etc.

24 Nisbett warns against accepting at face value the rhetoric of IT-based meritocracy, demonstrating how having social contacts in IT-ITES companies can be helpful in getting a job, though it does not guarantee one a job; see Nisbett, N., Growing up in the Knowledge Society: Living the IT Dream in Bangalore, Routledge India, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 181–82Google Scholar. See also C. Upadhya and A. R. Vasavi, ‘Work, Culture and Sociality in the Indian IT Industry: A Sociological Study’, Final report submitted to the Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternatives in Development, School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies. 2006, p. 29, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278002564_Work_Culture_and_Sociality_in_the_Indian_Information_Technology_IT_Industry_A_Sociological_Study, [accessed 26 January 2018]. Though some of my interlocutors did speak about a friend who had told them about a vacancy in their company, or a relative who had got them an interview, they still maintained that it was not necessary to possess such connections to get these jobs, and indeed most of my interlocutors who had jobs reported having got these jobs without having had to draw on social contacts.

25 With increasing privatization, there are fewer government jobs available. I was told that, even more than in the past, having ‘influence’ (social connections) and paying bribes had become crucial for getting any kind of government job. Though some of my ETC students spoke about secure government jobs as being the best kind of employment a person could have, most were not actively seeking government jobs.

26 Nisbett, ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality’.

27 M. Joseph, ‘A Linguistic Truth: Now, English is Our National Language’ in Deccan Herald. 5 January 2013, http://www.deccanherald.com/content/140180/a-linguistic-truth-now-english.html, [accessed 31 October 2017].

28 When I use terms like ‘good English’ and ‘proficient English’ I am referring to my interlocutors’ assessments. Of course, different people meant different things by these terms.

29 For example: Azmath, ‘Wanted: English-Speaking Policemen’ in The Times of India. 22 June 2005, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2005-06-22/bangalore/27863546_1_constables-control-room-english, [accessed 31 October 2017]. In 2014, in the months preceding the highly competitive Indian Civil Service examination, there were street protests regarding one component of this exam: the recently introduced Civil Service Aptitude Test. Protestors argued that this test demanded a level of proficiency in English that most students who had not attended an English-medium school did not possess, and thus was biased against such students. The government eventually announced that students’ marks in the English component of the test would not be included for grading. ‘“Anti-Hindi Bias” Argument Behind Row over CSAT’ in The Times of India. 26 June 2014b, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/Anti-Hindi-bias-argument-behind-row-over-CSAT/articleshow/39013446.cms, [accessed 26 January 2018].

30 Nisbett, ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality’, p. 936.

31 Joseph, ‘A Linguistic Truth’.

32 See also Nisbett, ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality’; Nisbett, Growing up in the Knowledge Society, p. 53.

33 Pre-university courses (usually two years long) are intermediate courses attended by graduates of Standard 10.

34 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’; Nisbett, ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality’; Fernandes, ‘Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India’; Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke.

35 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’, pp. 583–84.

36 Liechty, M., Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2003Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., p. 34.

38 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’, p. 580.

39 Lukose, R. A., Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India, Duke University Press, Durham, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Liechty, Suitably Modern, p. 138.

41 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’, p. 591.

42 Liechty, Suitably Modern, p. 87.

43 Dickey, ‘The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle’, p. 596.

44 See also Sheorey, R., Learning and Teaching English in India, Volume 7 in Research in Applied Linguistics, Sage Publications, London, 2006, p. 14Google Scholar; Kumar, K., Learning from Conflict, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1996, pp. 59–73Google Scholar.

45 S. Srivastava, ‘Alphabet Order to Discrimination’ in The Hindu. 4 March 2013, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/alphabetical-order-to-discrimination/article4573888.ece, [accessed 11 November 2017].

46 See also: Bénéï, V., Schooling India: Hindus, Muslims, and the Forging of Citizens, Permanent Black, Ranikhet, Bangalore, 2008, p. 44Google Scholar; Tambiah, S. J., ‘The Magical Power of Words’. Man, vol. 3, issue 2, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, a common critique of the way English was taught in Kannada-medium schools was that students there learned English as if it was a mantra—they committed their English lessons to memory, without understanding them.

47 Jeffrey et al., Degrees Without Freedom?

48 Ibid., p. 76.

49 Ibid., p. 67.

50 Ibid., p. 76.

51 Sarangapani, P., Constructing School Knowledge: An Ethnography of Learning in an Indian Village, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California, 2002, p. 58Google Scholar.

52 By this, he did not mean that one should literally eat English food, but that one needed to immerse oneself completely in the English language.

53 Somebody who has graduated from Standard Ten (the end of high school, in most Indian schools), but has no further educational qualifications.

54 A person who has a Bachelor of Technology or Master of Technology degree.

55 Karthik said that the clients had gained the impression that he knew only Kannada because when they had first met him, his boss had been speaking to him in Kannada.

56 When students pass Standard Ten at schools that follow the state syllabus, they are awarded a Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC).

57 Liechty tells us about how one of his interlocutors spoke about upper-class students having a ‘certain (perhaps cultivated) indifference’ to appearances. He writes: ‘These students [. . .] have nothing to prove—and their families’ financial security allows them to “just throw something on”. On the other hand [. . .] The insecurity of middle-classness breeds a kind of focused earnestness about dress and the need to boast about new acquisitions. For them proper clothing is a “big deal” and constitutes an important part of their claims to membership in the urban middle class’ (Liechty, Suitably Modern, p. 136). Similarly, most of my interlocutors who had attended relatively elite English-medium schools felt under no pressure to demonstrate their English proficiency. Indeed, some of them told me that—unhappy about how Kannada was disappearing from an increasing number of public spaces in the city—they had started making an effort to speak Kannada more, and encouraged others (salesmen, auto-rickshaw drivers) to speak in Kannada.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., p. 115.

60 Of course, as Liechty illustrates, demonstrating appropriate consumer behaviour is also not a matter of simply purchasing goods—one has to know how to display the goods one buys. For instance, he argues that ‘doing fashion’ involved more than just wearing certain kinds of clothes and make-up: it also involved cultivating a certain kind of demeanour, comportment, and manners. Nevertheless, I would argue that performing English proficiency is still more difficult than performing consumer behaviour.

61 Nisbett, ‘Friendship, Consumption, Morality’.

62 Chang, L., Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, United States, Spiegel & Grau, 2009Google Scholar.

63 There was an awareness that there were people who had managed to learn good English despite having attended a Kannada-medium school or ‘local’ private school, and such people were usually respected.

64 See also Nisbett, Growing up in the Knowledge Society, p. 184.

65 Srinivasaraju, S., Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture, Navakarnataka Publications, Bangalore, 2008, p. 23Google Scholar.