Re-Examining Linguistic Performance at a Community Participation School in Rural Rajasthan: An Ethnographic Exploration

Most people, including teachers, consider language simply a means of communication. There is a need for a holistic perspective on language in order to appreciate the role of language in schooling and overall educational transmission. Language is needed to be examined in a multi-dimensional space and give due importance to its structural, literary, sociological, cultural, psychological, and aesthetic aspects. Sociologists and Sociolinguists emphasise that not only does linguistic competence need to be understood but socio-cultural and economic aspects of linguistic performance too must be taken in the consideration while discussing about the language and its origin, practice, and implications (Bernstein 1973, Bourdieu 1977, Gumperz 1962, 1971 Gumperz & Hymes 1986, Habermas 2001, 2002).

Against this backdrop, the present paper, based on an ethnographic fieldwork at a community - participation school in the Alwar district, Rajasthan, India attempts to examine and explain the nuances and modus-operandi of socio-cultural dimensions of linguistic competence & performance in the pedagogic communication and overall classroom processes at a community-participation school. These socio-cultural dimensions are categorised as Procedural & Empirical Language, and Lexical & Referential Understanding. These dimensions are categorised to capture different aspects of linguistic performance. The present paper, based on the fieldwork experience of the researcher and participants’ rich narratives, specifically asks that how does the Procedural and Empirical Language function at the school and in overall educational transmission? and, how the Lexical and Referential Understanding is determined by variations in the efficiency of the communication between teachers and students from different socio-economic backgrounds?

Hence, the present paper is an attempt to present the detailed theoretical - conceptual interrogation and ethnographic reflection of linguistic performance during the process of schooling and overall educational transmission at a community-participation school situated in a village of Alwar district, Rajasthan, India.