1.
FUNCTIONS
The
language/s chosen or permitted for use in administration may have to perform the
following functions of administrations:
a) Public to the Government:
It should help the public to communicate with
the Government.
b) Government to the Public:
It should be used to communicate the official
decisions and other official matters related to public interest.
c) Governmental or Departmental:
It should be used to communicate within the
jurisdiction of the concerned Government, State or Central.
d) Processing:
Within the machinery of the Government it should be put to
use for processing the communications received from the public, other offices
of the same Government and from other Governments.
e) Inter-State:
It should be used to communicate with other State Governments.
f) Legislations - Written:
It should be used in written form to frame rules,
regulations, procedures, etc., that help the
State and Union to govern.
g) Legislations - Oral:
It should be used in the spoken form on formal occasions,
forums and in discussions relating to the issues mentioned in (f) above.
h)
Service in State and Union :
It should be in use in the process of selection
of personnel for service in the concerned jurisdiction.
2.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
The characteristics of the language chosen to perform these functions can be codified
as follows: It should be:
a) easy to comprehend,
b) simple to use,
c) economic to express/communicate,
d) amenable to the process of standardization,
modernization and mechanization,
e) precise and able to make finer distinctions
of meaning to legislate and interpret,
f) reflect the political system it
represents,
g) in active use among majority of the people to be governed by
it,
h) has a history of its use in administration,
i) has competence to
express the aspirations of the Government and the governed,
j) in a position
to gain respect from the people who are going to be governed by it,
k) find
acceptance from all those governed by it, and
l) a part of the educational
system.
3.
CHARACTERISTICS : STRUCTURAL
From the totality of language, a segment comprising of certain elements that are
frequent and essential for intricate administrative functioning forms the core
of the language used for administration. The frequent sentence patterns of it
are listed here.1
a)
Verbless constructions.
b) Use of prohibitive constructions instead of negative
imperative constructions.
c) Use of definitive imperative constructions instead
of imperative constructions.
d) Use of the following types of constructions
to bring impersonal impression:
(i) Passive constructions and
(ii) Verbal-noun
constructions.
e) Use of derived transitives verbs, and verbs derived from
nouns.
f) Non-use or rare use of intransitive verbs.
g) Rare use of constructions
with verbs of the informative register.
h) Use of constructions in which a
non-human noun is referred to by the human pronoun and usage of human personal
ending to the verbs.
i) Use of paragraph sentence constructions.
j) Non-use
of I and II person pronouns in the constructions.
k) Use of tenseless constructions.
l) Constructions rendered in the written style of the language.
m) Constructions
using the adverbs that are not in frequent use in the informative register.
n) Constructions using more than one connector.
o) Constructions using the
nouns as verbs.
p) Constructions with deleted case markers.
q) Constructions
with unusual case markers
r) Constructions without figuratives.
4.
IMPLICATIONS
Implications on different spheres of life of the choice of a language for use
in administration are elucidated below:
a)
Linguistics
i) Spread of its use into the new territories of administration,
ii) Growth of the language -
- impetous in the process of standardization,
- access to the processes of modernization and mechanization,
- growth of
vocabulary stock due to accretion,
- development of tendencies such as purism,
liberalism, eclecticism,
- historical changes in the basic structure of language,
iii) Increased use in media for mass communication.
b)
Educational
i) Becomes a part of educational system,
ii) May become medium of instruction
at various levels of education,
iii) Knowledge of it may become a precondition
or past-condition for employment.
c)
Social
i) Becomes a language with prestige,
ii) Helps the speakers to develop an
independent identity,
iii) May develop social equality among speakers of
different dialects of the same language,
iv) May develop social inequality
among speakers of other languages within the same administered territory,
v) May lead to homogeneity and cohesion, and dissolve social tensions,
vi)
May develop heterogeneity, and non-cohesion and create social tensions.
d)
Psychological
i)
The speakers of that language may feel elated and claim superiority,
ii)
The speakers of other languages within the same administered territory may feel
depressed thus leading to inferiority,
iii) Emotional attachment from the
speakers of it as their mother tongue,
iv) Emotional detachment from the speakers
of other mother tongues of the same administered territory.
v) May develop
positive attitude towards it among mother tongue speakers of it,
vi) May
develop negative or repulsive attitude towards it, among non-mother tongue speakers
of it, residing in the same region.
e)
Political
i)
May lead to the polarisation of political parties,
ii) Question of its use
or non-use may become a 'question' of the survival of a political party,
iii)
May become a tool for use during elections to various bodies and positions.
f)
Geographical
i) May become a criterion to unite the territories in which it is in use.
g)
Economic
i) Overtly, may widen the economic opportunities of the users of it by crating
and/or widening the employment market,
ii) Overtly, may widen the economic
opportunities of the printers, publishers, technologists, authors, etc., by creating
new avenues of income,
iii) May lead to development in various walks of life
by making the information available to the needy who were deprived of the same
thus for due to lack of communication.
h)
Cultural
i) May be able to keep the people being administered united emotionally irrespective
of their home language, sect, caste, religion and other such variables,
ii)
May be able to carry the heritage to the next generations,
iii) May be able
to imbibe or absorb the culture of all the people being administered.
5.
STRATEGIES
The policy framework for the use of language in administration is elucidated in
the Constitution and some of the Official Language Acts of the Union and States,
Reports of the Commissions and Committees seen in the previous sections have taken
care of the sentiments of the users of language in administration and those administered,
in their respective spheres of Union and States. In order to implement the policy
the following measures and strategies are adopted by the Union and States.
a)
Mechanical
i) Providing of Official Language typewriters and now
ii) Computers.
b)
Manpower
i) Training of the employees in the use of Official Language in administration,
ii) Training of the typists and stenographers in the Official Language,
iii)
Training in translation of documents from and to Official Language,
iv) Making
the knowledge of the Official Language compulsory to enter the Government, and
quasi-Government service as pre-condition or post-condition.
c)
Material
i)
Providing adequate and necessary technical terms,
ii) SProviding bilingual
and multilingual glossary,
iii) Providing Manuals and Acts in the concerned
Official Language.
d)
Temporal
i)
Graded switchover year by year from the language already in use for administration
to the new Official Language,
ii) Switchover taking place horizontally or
vertically in the Government. That is, switching over department-wise, or switching
over from taluk level, district level and then at secretariat level, district
level and then at secretariat level to the Official Language.
The development of disharmony if any need not be only among the non-mother tongue
speakers of the Official Language. It can even develop among the mother tongue
speakers, because they have to adust to the changed circumstances. So, this policy
of gradual strategy of implementation has helped the growth of confidence among
the officials and made it possible for officials to equip themselves to adjust
to the new situation.