Orality and Language

G. N. Devy is Honorary Professor, Centre for Multidisciplinary Development Research, Dharwad, India, and Chairman, People’s Linguistic Survey of India. An award-winning writer and cultural activist, he is known for his 50-volume language survey. He is Founder Director of the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh in Gujarat, India, and was formerly Professor of English at M. S. University of Baroda. He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Linguapax Prize, Prince Claus Award and Padma Shri. With several books in English, Marathi and Gujarati, he has co-edited (with Geoffrey V. Davis and K. K. Chakravarty) Narrating Nomadism: Tales of Recovery and Resistance (2012); Knowing Differently: The Challenge of the Indigenous (2013); Performing Identities: Celebrating Indigeneity in the Arts (2014); and The Language Loss of the Indigenous (2016), published by Routledge. Geoffrey V. Davis was Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Aachen, Germany. He was international chair of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) and chair of the European branch (EACLALS). He co-edited Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures and Cultures in English and the African studies series Matatu. His publications include Staging New Britain: Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice (2006) and African Literatures, Postcolonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources (2013).

Introduction; 1 Orality in Southeast Asia; 2 The languages in India and a movement in retrospect; 3 Indigenous languages of Arnhem Land; 4 Orality and writing in Spanish America: a translation perspective; 5 “How to write an oral culture”: indigenous tradition in contemporary Canadian native writing; 6 Indigenous languages in Canada