| |
I
am a linguist in both the popular and scholarly
senses of the term. In the popular sense, I am a
linguist because I proficiently speak Urdu, Hindi,
English, and Arabic. In addition to commanding
different levels of speech in Urdu-Hindi, I
also have a good control of both the Devanagari and
Persian scripts. I also have a near native
proficiency in Yemeni dialect. Currently I am
learning Kuwaiti Arabic dialect.
In
the scholarly sense, I am a linguist, because I
study language. I specialize in
sociolinguistics –a
branch of linguistics that studies the social,
political, and cultural aspects of language. In my
doctoral research, I studied the changing social
perceptions of the Urdu language in India. I spent a
lot of time in Old Delhi studying how
Muslims and Hindus of various generations
use Urdu in their day-to-day social
experiences. I studied people
born before the partition of India in 1947 and those
born after it. I also studied the younger generation
of Muslims and Hindus at Zakir Husain College,
Delhi. My research shows that on the social level, Urdu
symbolizes
different things to different people.
I
earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
My earlier degrees include an
M.A. and M. Phil. in linguistics from the
Department of
Linguistics, University of Delhi, India and a B.A. (Hons.)
in Arabic and linguistics from the Center for Asian
& African Studies (CAAS),
Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU), New
Delhi. Currently, I am Assistant Professor of English at the
American University of Kuwait, Kuwait.
|