Linguistic imperialism is it possible for the Chittagonian local variety to avoid the worse consequences

Abstract

Linguistic imperialism has been a long lasting burning issue in this world since the last few centuries. Whenever a race or a nation dominates over the others, they initiate the linguistic and cultural aggression on the weaker groups, sometimes forcibly and sometimes subtle. During the era of colonization, the advanced nations used force over the countries where they established their colonies and injected the venom of linguistic imperialism, which is why today many countries are still using those languages despite gaining independence. Linguists are leading important research in this regard, which we find in the works of Sultana (2021), Hoque (2011, 2016 & 2018), McCarthy (2013) and Ajepe (2013). They discuss in detail the imperialism of the English language and its eventual evolution of becoming the lingua franca, but also underlines the existence of a subtle shadow of colonization looming over the countries previously colonized by the English. However, Sultana (2021) worked and discussed focusing on the linguistic aggression ofBangla, towards the indigenous ethnic groups of Bangladesh. All these studies are based on Phillipson's theory on linguistic imperialism ( 1992). This theory argues that linguistic imperialism was driven by economic and political dominance. This is quite true, considering the histories of the nations who suffer from colonialism. Even though Phillipson discussed keeping English in focus as an imperialistic language, the theory can be proved for other non-English languages as well. However, there is still some more to explore in this regard, if we consider the previous works mentioned above. None of them mentions the comparison of the impact of linguistic imperialism on different varieties of a language in a country. That is what our research is going to be, we studied the effect of linguistic imperialism of English on the mainstream Bangla, then the Chinagonian variety of Bangla, afterwards we compared which variety gets more affected by the invasiveness of the foreign language and why. Data were collected primarily through interviews of a few local families and questionnaires, and secondarily from the books and journals and local newspapers. We strived to find a solution whether this imperialism can be stopped, and if not. then whether the phenomenon can be used for benefiting the local languages.