Thursday, April 3, 2025 – 5pm, Foster 103
Shubham Shivang, PhD Student, Departments of Anthropology and Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
This talk takes up the “problem” of standardization in the North Indian language of Bhojpuri, categorized as a dialect of Hindi by the Indian state. While projects of Bhojpuri linguistic standardization mobilize and contend with the ever-present contrast of Hindi to establish Bhojpuri’s status as a distinct code, Bhojpuri media workers utilize Bhojpuri’s inferior status as a resource for distinction. This talk argues that these two domains of cultural work are conjoined, despite their differences, by a shared orientation toward Hindi where the status of Bhojpuri, be it as a linguistic code or as a media industry, becomes the ground for its reconsideration and appeal.