Colonialism and Grammatical Representation John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the 'Hindustani' Language in the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

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Colonialism and Grammatical Representation John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the 'Hindustani' Language in the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries by Steadman-Jones, Richard, 9781405161329
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Between 1787 and 1796, John Gilchrist, a surgeon in the service of the East India Company published the first really detailed analysis of the 'Hindustani' language for the use of his compatriots in India. The study of colonial linguistics has tended to follow one of two paths, characterising texts like Gilchrist's either as exercises in technical problem-solving or as reductively political examples of 'colonial discourse'. This study develops a method of reading colonial grammars that acknowledges both dimensions of the text - the technical and the political. It examines the particular technical problems that faced grammarians such as Gilchrist, the description of ergativity being a good example, and it analyses the resources available to them as they attempted to analyse these, to eighteenth-century westerners, 'new' phenomena. But it also explores the political consequences of the choices that they made, characterising features like ergativity as 'flash points' in the grammar - moments of difference that could easily elicit reactions of fear, confusion, and even contempt in colonial observers. After three chapters of contextual discussion dealing with the political, biographical, and intellectual contexts of his work, the book provides detailed readings of Gilchrist's grammatical praxis and, through them, presents a picture of the complex relationship between grammatical inquiry and the politics of colonial discourse in the early years of the Indian Empire.
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