jmtp (print) issn 2632-4490

jmtp (online) issn 2632-4504

Article

Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual

ethos: Family plurilingualism and coloniality
Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza

Abstract

This article discusses a family’s plurilingualism from a southern and decolo-

nial lens, looking at the role of language ideologies in its plurilingual practices.
It focuses on the concept of space as kshetra and its accompanying plurilingual
ethos, originating in the Asian origins of the family. The overarching claim is
that by holding on to its legacy of a plurilingual ethos, the family has maintained
its ever-changing plurilingualism over three generations by navigating a tension
or duality between an out-group assimilation to the prevalent monolingual-
ism that it encounters outside the home in its transcontinental migrations and
an in-group maintenance of plurilingualism within the kshetra of the family.
The article concludes that it appears to be the ethical attitude to linguistic and
cultural heterogeneity, rather than the actual use or maintenance of a specific
heritage language, that is of more value to transnational and transgenerational
plurilingual families.
Keywords: decoloniality; family language policy; multilingualism;
plurilingual ethos; southern approach

1 Introduction
Encouraged by, and attempting to build on, Lanza’s (2021) concept of family
as space and her call to explore the different aspects of space, this article –
primarily a conceptual discussion – examines the plurilingual practices of
an extended family over three generations, spread over four continents, in
constant dialogue with its experience as a colonized other. It also responds
to what Lomeu Gomes (2021:708) and Degu (2021) call the need to redress

Affiliation
University of São Paulo, Brazil
email: lynnmario@gmail.com
Submitted: 2023-06-06 Accepted: 2023-09-17
jmtp vol 4.2 2023 223–243 https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.26407
©2023, equinox publishing
224 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

‘the lack of southern voices, experiences and epistemologies’ in the field of

family plurilingualism.
The discussion presupposes Lanza and Lomeu Gomes’ (2020) ‘family’ as
conceived along the private–public continuum of social life; it also responds
to Spolsky’s (2019) and Mirvahedi’s (2020) perception that family plurilin-
gualism interacts intimately with the sociopolitical, historical and economic
contexts in which families find themselves. Moreover, by focusing on a family
constituted through colonization, migration, transnational movements and
intercultural marriages and bonds, the discussion also departs from Lanza
and Wei’s (2016:653) perception that globalization intensifies the encounters
of different traditions, values and languages in families.
However, in response to Spolsky’s (2007) statement that language practices
are analyzed by sociolinguistics, and his later (Spolsky, 2019) extended consid-
eration of the effects of colonization as a determining factor, or ‘nonlinguistic
force’, that compromises language policy, the discussion will embody a socio-
linguistics of the south (Menezes de Souza, 2019, 2023a, 2023b) in its use of
decolonial and southern theories that perceive globalization as the aftermath of
colonization (Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel, 2007; Mignolo and Walsh, 2018;
Santos, 2018). In this vein, coloniality refers to the lasting effects of the process
of colonization after the latter’s declared political end – hence the presence of
coloniality in globalization.
Among the three interconnected components that Spolsky (2007) considers
to constitute language policy – practices, beliefs, and management – he appears
to privilege practices (2007:3) as being more effective in sustaining family lan-
guage policy. He views practices as the root cause not only of acquisition, but
also of non-acquisition; this is because immigrant parents, regretting their
children’s non-acquisition of their heritage language, fail to realize that this
may be caused by them not having used the heritage language in their everyday
practices. This has generated the much-commented upon conflict or discrep-
ancy between management and practice (Curdt-Christiansen, 2016; Hollebeke
et al., 2022; Sevinç and Miravahedi, 2023). Following Spolsky, our discussion
will focus on the plurilingual1 practices of one extended transnational family
over three generations and across four continents.
In this article, the family under discussion (henceforth The Family) origi-
nated in Portuguese India (see Figure 1). Its second generation then migrated
to British India and British Arabia (the latter an administrative extension
of the former). Before migrating again to the former Portuguese colony of
Mozambique and finally to the colonial metropolitan nations of Portugal and
the United Kingdom, the second generation sent their seven offspring (the third
generation) to Britain for their education. The Family carried its everyday plu-
rilingual practices with it. Although these underwent marked transformations,
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 225

they continued to be oriented and framed by the ‘non-linguistic force’ of a

plurilingual ethos. The third generation, in turn, migrated intercontinentally
and intermarried cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. These three gen-
erations and their plurilingual practices are all traversed by the epistemes of
colonization and globalization. Grosfoguel (2013) characterizes these epistemes
that privilege the hegemonic/colonizing cultures, knowledges and languages
as epistemic racism.

Figure 1. The Family

As a member of the third generation of The Family, and in recognition

of the profound impact that centuries of colonization have had on us, our
positionality is shaped by an awareness of the enduring legacies of coloniality
and a commitment to challenge the epistemic racism of these legacies, their
colonial epistemes and their narratives.

2 Nurturing a plurilingual ethos

This article therefore discusses The Family’s plurilingualism from a south-
ern and decolonial perspective, looking at the role of language ideologies as
‘nonlinguistic forces’ (Spolsky, 2019) that affect plurilingual practices. More
specifically, the article focuses on the role of the concept of space as kshetra,
as specifically used by Khubchandani (1988, 1997, 1998) and its accompanying
plurilingual ethos originating in the Asian origins of The Family. The overarch-
ing claim is that by holding on to its legacy of such an ethos (Khubchandani,
1988), The Family has, over three generations, maintained its ever-changing
plurilingualism by navigating a tension between an assimilation with the
prevalent monoculture(s) and monolingualism(s) that it encounters as mark-
ers of coloniality outside the home in its transcontinental migrations, and
226 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

a maintenance of plurilingualism within the specific space (kshetra) of The

Family.
The article begins with a discussion of colonization, coloniality, abyssal
thinking and an ecology of knowledges, and their force on language, generat-
ing a monolingual ethos. It then discusses a particular effort to navigate colo-
niality and the monolingual ethos through a conception of plurilingual space
as kshetra, framed by the functioning of a plurilingual ethos. These concepts
then frame a discussion of the plurilingual practices of The Family. The article
concludes that, more than the actual use or maintenance of specific heritage
languages, it is the inherited concept of space as kshetra (ecological, organic,
linguistically holistic and accommodating) and its accompanying plurilingual
ethos, passed down through generations and across transcontinental move-
ments, that shapes The Family’s practices. This contributes to maintaining,
across time and space, The Family’s sense of identification and oneness.

3 On modus operandi
Rather than a classic ethnographic focus, as foreseen by Spolsky (2007),
this conceptual discussion of family plurilingual practice took recourse to
biographic narrative analysis, given that the current author is a member of
The Family. Sensitive to the colonial origins of ethnography and the risk of
epistemic racism inherent in presuppositions of universally valid processes
of knowledge construction, our focus is on situated narrative collection and
analysis. With Chang (2008:43), we believe that, while autoethnography also
uses narrative and self-narrative, autobiographical narrative transcends a mere
narration of self to engage in cultural and interpretive analyses.
This study emerges from a dataset of 18 hours of recorded narratives of nine
members of The Family, plus the author, on their reminiscences and reflec-
tions of current and past family plurilingual practices, involving themselves,
members of their own generation and previous and later generations.
Through our decolonial lens, and in response to the epistemic racism often
embedded in universalistic modes of academic research, we recall Bhabha’s
(2014) words on the anti-colonial right to narrate as an enunciative right, the
recuperation of a previously silenced voice claiming and performing the right
to dialogically address and be addressed in a colonial context typically marked
by disturbed and interrupted dialogues. Bhabha is here referring to the colonial
logic of negating the being, knowledges and languages of the colonized and, as
a strategy against this negation of agency, recommends the enunciative right to
narration through which the colonized inaugurates their previously silenced
participation in the dialogue and demands recognition (Bhabha, 1994:xxv).
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 227

We shall return to this theme below in relation to Santos’s (2007) concept of

the abyssal line and the ecology of knowledges.

4 Coloniality, abyssal thinking, the ecology of

knowledges and the monolingual ethos
Santos (2007:15) starts from the premise that a colonial monoculture that valo-
rizes only its own knowledges, language and being does so by actively produc-
ing as non-existent other knowledges, languages and beings: ‘non-existence
is produced whenever a certain entity is disqualified and rendered invisible,
unintelligible, or irreversibly discardable … the different logics of production
of non-existence are all manifestations of the same rational monoculture’. For
our purposes in this article, and similar to the epistemic racism mentioned
earlier, we shall call this rational monoculture that produces the non-existence
of languages other than its own a monolingual ethos.
Santos (2007) describes, as a consequence of this rational monoculture, the
existence of an onto-epistemological abyssal line that postulates the knowl-
edges and languages of the colonizing culture on one side of the line and
deems them existent. It simultaneously produces on the other side of the line,
a radical absence of the knowledges and languages of the colonized. This radi-
cal absence of the negated other side of the line is the very basis upon which
the presence of the elements on the positive side of the line is constructed and
they are deemed to exist (Santos, 2007:18). This abyssal line, which produces
the radical non-existence of other than hegemonic knowledges and languages,
is the founding logic of the monolingual ethos and epistemic racism.
For Santos, modern Western thinking and practice today are still premised
on the assumptions of the previous colonial cycle, and consequently the cre-
ation of the abyssal line and the negation of its other side continues to be
constitutive of social and cultural hegemonic practices. Decolonial think-
ers (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) refer to a version of this phenomenon as the
already mentioned coloniality in which the production of the non-existence
of non-hegemonic cultures and languages persists. Moreover, according to
Santos (2007:15), ‘the impossibility of co-presence between the two sides of the
line runs supreme’. Such is the effect of the monolingual ethos and epistemic
racism.
In relation to language, examples of the abyssal line and epistemic racism
abound in colonial history, with lasting effects until today. In the case of what
was British India, first Grant (1792), then T.E. Macaulay infamously proposed
the Minute on Indian Education (1835), in which the cultural and linguistic
superiority of the Europeans was defended in relation to the Indians as if
it were indisputable (Agnihotri and Khanna, 1997) and colonial legislation
228 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

was passed in favour of English as the language of colonial education and

access to privilege. Similarly, Pinto (2007) and Botelho (2011) describe how,
in Portuguese India, the Portuguese refused to recognize the local language,
Konkani, imposing Portuguese as the language of education and privilege.
Given this colonial production of epistemic non-existence, according to
Santos (2007), reality cannot be reduced to what ‘exists’. Against the abyssal
line (and the monolingual ethos and epistemic racism), one needs an ampli-
fied realism that must include the realities that were silenced and produced
as absent, alongside those that did the silencing and excluding. A post-abyssal
practice must include realities that were previously produced as non-existent.
Here the deleterious effect of abyssal thinking, which was to produce epistemic
non-existence (giving rise to the monolingual ethos), is worth repeating. Thus,
in both British and Portuguese India, the epistemic inexistence of Indian lan-
guages was produced as a result of the preferred monolingual ethos. This had
a direct effect on the language practices of the first and second generations
of The Family.
Those in the first generation (this author’s maternal grandparents) were
born at the beginning of the twentieth century in Portuguese India under the
colonial imposition of monolingualism in Portuguese and the decreed inex-
istence of the local Konkani language. The first generation’s de facto plurilin-
gualism in both languages was driven underground by the epistemic racism
of the prevailing colonial monolingual ethos. This gave rise to a duality that
would mark the plurilingual practices of The Family for generations: although
a monolingual out-group posture is assumed externally outside the home,
in-group plurilingual practices are maintained within the domestic context
for in-group purposes. Though the colonial monolingual ethos decreed the
epistemic inexistence of local languages, these continued to exist vigorously.
For Santos (2007, 2018), in order to move against abyssal thinking one has
to promote an ecology of knowledges to replace the monoculture of the colo-
nial episteme that persists even today in current globalization, in order to
promote the re-existence of what was negated. This re-existence consists of
the negation of the negation that produced non-existence and disqualified the
existence of whatever was not of interest to or threatened the hegemonic colo-
nial monoculture. In terms of the colonial monolingual ethos, the existence
of the languages that were negated needs to be reaffirmed and recuperated in
the purported counter-colonial ecology, alongside and in coexistence with the
colonial languages that negated them.
The condition of possibility of such an ecology of knowledges is the principle
of incompleteness of all knowledges, triggering the need for inter-cultural and
inter-epistemological dialogue and debate. In this debate, each knowledge
shares its interest in overcoming a certain ignorance – its own incompleteness.
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 229

In such a dialogue, ‘practices that are ignorant in different ways turn into prac-
tices that are knowledgeable in different ways’ (Santos, 2007:19). Included in the
counter-colonial ecology are the knowledges and the language of the colonial
monoculture, here forced to accept their incompleteness and ignorance and
to perceive the need to overcome this ignorance in contact and in dialogue
with the plethora of other knowledges/languages that the monoculture had
previously produced as non-existent.
This purports to signal the end of the colonial monolingual ethos. It also
means that even the previously hegemonic colonial monoculture is permitted
to transform and re-exist. Santos (2007) is keen to elucidate that such an ecol-
ogy of knowledges, previously (in colonial times) verticalized in a hierarchy
and now horizontalized into an ecology, does not translate into relativism in
which equal validity is ascribed to all knowledges and languages. On the con-
trary, this ecology allows for a pragmatic discussion of alternative, local criteria
of validity and will not disqualify, tout court, knowledges and languages that
do not attend to the Western epistemological cultural and linguistic canon.
In the case of the colonial Portuguese India of The Family, however, the
hegemonic monolingual designs of the Portuguese ran aground. As Santos
(2003) suggests, Portuguese colonialism in India played a subaltern role in
relation to the British colonialism across the border in British India. While
the economy and opportunities for employment in British India bloomed,
the economy of metropolitan Portugal and that of its colonies were in frank
stagnation. To diminish possible unrest due to the lack of local employment,
the Portuguese colonial authorities allowed citizens of Portuguese India to
become literate and proficient in English, thus enabling them to seek employ-
ment in British India.
This resulted in the curious fact (Pinto, 2007) that, although Portuguese
colonial monolingual policy did not allow the local language, Konkani, to
be taught in official schools, it did permit the use of English – a language
totally foreign to the territory – as a medium of instruction in various local
schools. This echoes the duality of language use mentioned above: citizens
of Portuguese India were allowed to be plurilingual in what are to them two
foreign languages – Portuguese and English – but they were not allowed to
use their own language.
The first Generation took advantage of this apparent plurilingual toler-
ance on the part of the Portuguese colonial authorities, uneasily coexisting
with the official epistemically racist monolingual ethos. In possession of an
acquired proficiency in English, and in search of employment, it migrated to
British India only to encounter a similar paradoxical duality in the cultural-
linguistic situation. There too, the de facto plurilingualism of local languages
was invisibilized and masked by the official colonial monolingual ethos that
230 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

privileged British culture and English as a result of the abyssal line instituted
by the already mentioned Macaulay’s Minute.
Curiously here, the duality and discrepancies in and between the colo-
nial policies of Portugal and Britain in India benefited the first generation.
Notwithstanding their similar monocultural and monolingual policies, they
differed in the following aspect: whereas the Portuguese privileged the colo-
nized who were Christianized, the British privileged the colonized who were
Westernized, irrespective of religion (Pinto, 2007).
As Westernized Christians, and because they were literate in the official
languages of both colonial powers – English and Portuguese – the first genera-
tion were preferred for employment by the British colonial authorities ahead
of other non-Westernized Indians. The first generation was able to use to its
advantage the monoculturalism and monolingualism of the colonial abyssal
line in British India. The curious Portuguese colonial monolingual ethos that
imposed Portuguese, prohibited the local language (Konkani) and permitted
the learning of a foreign language (English) worked to their benefit in the
process of constituting themselves as Westernized English-speaking ‘appar-
ent monolinguals’.
Perceiving the transformative force of linguistic mastery in colonial rule,
they embarked on ‘mastering the language of mastery’ (Gordon, 2006:5). This
promised upward mobility in an epistemically racist paradigm that privileged
the colonizing culture and language. The first generation outwardly accommo-
dated to this paradigm by acquiring the role of apparent monolingual English
speakers in out-group contexts. However, they maintained their plurilingual
practices in Portuguese and Konkani in in-group (family) contexts. As we
shall see below, although Khubchandani (1997:127) critiques the power-hungry
duality of the current upwardly mobile Indian elite that pushes for increasing
monolingualism in English in out-group contexts but privately maintains its
plurilingualism, the duality of the first generation, on foreign land, is chosen
as a strategy of survival. Although it is more common to encounter migrants
adopting assimilation to out-group hegemonic monolingualism as a strategy
of survival, The Family maintained in-group plurilingualism alongside out-
group monolingualism in accordance with their traditional plurilingual ethos
and repertoires of the kshetra, as we shall see below.
Members of the third generation, who were sent to Britain as children to be
educated in English, recall being told by the second generation not to forget
that they were being sent to Britain to be educated ‘to learn how they think
because they rule half the world, so that you don’t become like them’. This
echoes Santos’s (2007) call for an ecology of knowledges, based not only on
the perception of one’s own incompleteness and ignorance, but also on the
inclusion (not substitution) of previously hegemonic knowledges. In terms
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 231

of language, this involves learning more functionally appropriate languages

rather than simply replacing a non-hegemonic language with a hegemonic
one. This is where a monolingual ethos may be included in, and not replaced
by, a plurilingual ethos.

5 Beyond and before the monolingual ethos: Space as

kshetra and the plurilingual ethos
A reader of Einar Haugen and a proponent of ecological perspectives of lan-
guage, Khubchandani (1997:79) maintains that plurilingualism in India cannot
be understood without an understanding of the Indian conception of space
as kshetra. Running parallel to Santos’s concept of an ecology of knowledges,
Khubchandani’s conception of kshetra is inseparable from his conception of
language and community ethics; it is space traversed by immense cultural and
linguistic heterogeneity and dynamism. It is the space of social coexistence
and conviviality in which static structural models are replaced by boundless,
fluid and fuzzy concepts of identity, language and culture. Here, grassroots
processual communicative transactions emphasize outcomes rather than com-
pleteness of form.
Speakers in a shared kshetra have repertoires consisting of linguistic
elements not statically separated into totalities such as languages, dialects
and vernaculars. The use of the repertoires in a kshetra is framed by what
Khubchandani calls the plurilingual ethos. Through the principle of stratifica-
tion, those linguistic elements in the repertoire that best attend to attaining
the objective of a specific linguistic transaction will be accessed for maximum
communicative effect following specific ethical rules of etiquette (see below).
Given its origins in India, The Family originates in and carries its conceptual
and ethical kshetra and accompanying plurilingual ethos across continents
and through its Three Generations.
As mentioned above, Spolsky (2019) proposed modifications to his previ-
ous theory (Spolsky, 2004) of language policy. It now includes (among other
things) a renewed focus on self-management and non-linguistic forces. Spolsky
(2019:327) describes self-management as depending ultimately on a ‘recog-
nition by speakers of their own lack of proficiency to operate in a needed
or desired linguistic environment’ and the use of accommodation strategies
through which a speaker unconsciously ‘modifies speech towards that of the
interlocutor.’ Besides now emphasizing management in policy as a bottom-up,
local and situated process, Spolsky attributes greater importance to extralin-
guistic forces. Both of these aspects – management and nonlinguistic forces
– are characteristics of the plurilingual ethos, as proposed by Khubchandani,
and evident in the plurilingual practices of The Family. The Family’s use of
232 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

apparent monolingualism, mentioned above, is evidence that, having perceived

the dualities present in both Portuguese and British colonial policies, their
perception of the role of nonlinguistic forces motivated them to self-manage
their linguistic behavior to strategically appear monolingual externally in out-
group practices and be plurilingual internally in in-group practices.
Given the immense cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the Indian sub-
continent, Khubchandani (1988:12) postulates the existence of a traditional
Indian ethical tolerance for heterogeneity at the grassroots level that responds
adequately to local plurilingual situational needs. This is accompanied by an
implicit ethical etiquette – the plurilingual ethos. This demands the use of
flexibility and a holistic focus on shared aspects (rather than differences or
deficits) when engaging in organic plurilingual communication characteristic
of such a kshetra. In the practice of such an ethical etiquette, members of a
shared kshetra develop positive attitudes towards variety and difference in
speech, and routinely ‘come out’ of their particular language codes to neutral
ground where successful translingual communication occurs (Khubchandani,
1997:137). The fruitful coming out of one’s language codes refers to the abroga-
tion of belief in one’s completeness.
For Khubchandani (1988:12), this demonstrates that groups that coexist in
a particular space ‘are always in a state of mutual accommodation’ (echoed
later by Spolsky, 2019). This mutual accommodation is not unlike what occurs
in interaction within Santos’s (2007) ecologies of knowledge in which all par-
ticipants see themselves as being incomplete and ignorant of something (the
absence in their repertoires of elements of other repertoires), as well as being
knowledgeable about something (the presence of elements in their own rep-
ertoires). This radically differs from the abyssal exclusion of epistemic racism
performed by a monolingual ethos that negates the value of other languages
and believes in its own monolingual completeness.
The ‘coming out of language codes’ and the principle of mutual accommoda-
tion between interlocutors, as elements of the implicit ethical etiquette of the
plurilingual ethos, characterize the ethical nature of the cross-cultural and
cross-linguistic practices of the first generation in their choice to contextually
vary their behaviour as either apparent monolinguals or as practising plurilin-
guals. If it is ethical to function as monolinguals in certain contexts when one
is in fact plurilingual, then there is a strong possibility that the monolingual
ethos is present as one of the elements to be drawn upon in the plurilingual
repertoire of The Family.
Khubchandani (1988:13) suggests that the elitist (and epistemically racist)
preference for singular, controllable, closed systems that occurs in Santos’s
(2007) concept of the abyssal line does not pertain to the Indian ethical tra-
dition of openness and tolerance; however, the openness of this plurilingual
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 233

ethos may easily be used to accommodate monolingualism. It is the ethical

openness to difference in a kshetra that contributes to a feeling of oneness
among the diverse peoples that share that space and consolidates ‘a sense of
collective reality’ (Khubchandani, 1998:11).
Khubchandani (1983:167–175) differentiates this organic, underlying one-
ness of Indian plurilingualism from other forms of plurilingualism that
homogenize diversity through convergence. In the case of organic Indian
plurilingualism, the underlying shared holistic unity ‘nurtures rather than
forbids flexibility and variability’ (Agnihotri and Khanna, 1997:34). It is this
nurturing of flexibility and variability as an ethic that frames the plurilingual-
ism cultivated by The Family across three generations. This resonates with
Lanza’s (2021:765) concept of space as dynamic and continually negotiated
among various social actors.
There is also overlap with Lanza and Lomeu Gomes’ (2020:165) concept of
the family-as-space as a configuration occurring along a continuum between
two fixed points. In the case of the conception of a family as a microcosm of
Khubchandani’s (1983) version of a kshetra, with a plurilingual ethos, operat-
ing through the stratification of elements (see above) in a repertoire, multiple
configurations of continua may arise in varying contexts, in relation to dif-
ferent interlocutors and in different communicative transactions: in-group or
out-group, monolingual or plurilingual, monolingual in-group or plurilingual
out-group, monolingual in-group in language X or monolingual in-group in
language Y and so on. For instance, the members of a kshetra, as conceived
by Khubchandani, may belong to different identity groups gathered around
various cultural, linguistic and social features.
However, at the same time, all members share a core of experience. Given
the diversity and multiplicity of cultural, linguistic and social features in a
kshetra, and through the process of stratification, this shared core may vary
centripetally and centrifugally according to the factor that comes to the fore
in any particular transactional encounter. For instance, if the encounter is
religion based, a religion in common will be the shared core accompanied by
differences of language and social class. If the encounter is culture based, such
as the commemoration of a cultural festival, this becomes the shared core,
despite other linguistic, religious and social differences.
Moreover, the concept of the verbal repertoire is key to this process of
accommodation or adequacy to context in the functioning of the plurilingual
ethos. A repertoire here is conceived as being spread over a speech spectrum
under varying pressures of space and time; this modulation is dictated by spe-
cific physical and social requirements or by inherited tradition (Khubchandani,
1997:136). As such, the verbal repertoire of a specific individual or a specific
group in a kshetra of a plural society is characterized by a creative use of
234 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

speech variation in diverse combinations through linguistic stratification in

everyday communicative transactions, as mentioned above. The apparently
contradictory (monolingual and/or plurilingual) practices of The Family need
to be seen through the lenses of the functioning of such a repertoire and such
stratification.
Whereas the maternal element of the second generation of The Family was
born and bred in British Arabia (subject to the colonial monolingual ethos of
English), the paternal element was born and bred in Portuguese India (subject
to the colonial monolingual ethos of Portuguese). Fluent in Arabic, English,
and Konkani, and with a partial and passive knowledge of the Portuguese
language that her Portuguese Indian-born parents spoke at home, the maternal
element of the second generation was educated in monolingual Anglophone
British India. As occurred with the First Generation, it was still expedient in
British India to conceal one’s plurilingualism in out-group transactions and
function as a Christian monolingual Anglophone. On returning to her home
in British Arabia, after graduation, her marriage was arranged to the paternal
element of the Second Generation, a professional born and bred in Portuguese
India; though a speaker of Portuguese and Konkani, he spoke no English or
Arabic. His fiancée, the maternal element of the Second Generation, spoke
little Portuguese. As both had sufficient school French in common (then an
international lingua franca), and both shared the plurilingual ethos of the
kshetra originating in Portuguese India, they accessed their existing reper-
toires to accommodate to each other’s communicative needs. Thus, the school
French they shared became their domestic lingua franca, even though French
was not the language of British Arabia nor one of their in-group languages. It
merely existed as an element in their repertoires that, through stratification,
was functionally called upon and rose to become an in-group lingua franca.
Over time, English, Portuguese, Arabic and Konkani entered into the rep-
ertoires of both elements of the Second Generation. Through stratification in
the new plurilingual configuration, English replaced French as the in-group
lingua franca and, together with Arabic, they became the languages of out-
group transactions. British Arabia was still dominated by the Anglophone
monolingual ethos that produced the inexistence of the local language, Arabic.
Following the ethic of assuming an apparent monolingualism in the colonial
language when engaged in transactions with the colonial authorities, in British
Arabia the second generation continued the strategy previously used in British
India and Portuguese India, now manifested as an apparent monolingualism
in English, in out-group transactions with the British authorities. At the same
time, out of sight and earshot of the British authorities, Arabic was used in
out-group transactions with the local Arabian population.
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 235

Stratification in one’s repertoire functions as the opposite of relativism.

Whereas relativism in a speech repertoire could suggest that the elements in
the repertoire all have and maintain the same inherent value, through strati-
fication, the values of the elements will be modulated according to the role
and the attitudes of the participants, the settings and the channels of com-
munication, situational expediency and the communication tasks performed
(Khubchandani, 1997:137). In this everyday use of stratification to modulate
the use of elements in the repertoires in enhancing an ethical sensitivity to
adequacy, function supersedes form: ‘what synergically transpires (or what
is actually grasped) from a speech event matters more than what it signifies’
(Khubchandani, 1997:50).
As we have seen, encountering complexities and ambiguities in colonial
cultural and linguistic policies in Portuguese India, British India and British
Arabia, the second generation responded to these non-linguistic forces by self-
managing its plurilingual practices. As colonized subjects in these colonial
contexts, they invested in modifying their linguistic practices in accordance
with the expectations of their colonizing interlocutors, for maximum mutual
benefit as opposed to the benefit of only one of the parties involved. They
accomplished this by carrying with them the plurilingual ethos of their kshetra
of origin, from which they acquired know-how of how to ethically navigate
linguistic heterogeneity.2

6 Nurturing organic pluralism

Khubchandani (1997) characterizes the ‘complex web of relationships’ among
languages in a particular kshetra as organic pluralism, similar to a mosaic or
rainbow, in which each constituent part of the mosaic sees itself as integrating
the whole but is averse to being identified separately with one specific group. He
represents this organic and integral relation in the formula 1 x 1 x 1 = 1. Here
the relationship between the elements in a configuration, such as a repertoire,
is multiplicational, implying the attainment of maximum worth from their
functioning in unison for mutual benefit; the whole is beyond, and cannot be
reduced to, the sum of the parts. This is different from a relation of addition
in which each part is inferior to (lesser than) the functioning of the whole. As
such, The Family’s contextual use of apparent monolingualism as an element
of its repertoire does not subtract from their plurilingualism; on the contrary,
it multiplies and reinforces it.
As another possible configuration of this organic plurilingualism,
Khubchandani (1998:15) suggests the metaphor of a rainbow, through which
‘different dimensions interflow semiotically into one another, responsive to
236 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

differences of identity as in osmosis’. The osmosis suggests that the diversity

be seen as an ecology or organic plurality, where all is interconnected but
nothing is assimilated to a predominating homogeneous centre, to the extent
of losing its distinctness.
As already mentioned, plurality in such a context is marked by a fuzziness
of boundaries, a fluidity in identities, a complementarity of in-group and out-
group communication and a malleability and plasticity in communication
patterns. Amidst such plurality and fuzziness, the plurilingual ethos operates
in communication patterns through the use of synergy (in which interlocutors
invest in understanding and making themselves understood, taking recourse
to all resources in their repertoires) and serendipity (in which interlocutors are
open to unexpectedness, uncertainty and the lack of control in the commu-
nicative transaction). Such synergy and serendipity resonate with the signifi-
cance of non-linguistic forces and the importance, in plurilingual practices,
of accommodation to one’s interlocutor as emphasized by Spolsky (2019).
As the third generation of The Family appeared on the scene, English,
Portuguese, Arabic and Konkani constituted the family plurilingual reper-
toire. Once again, through stratification in in-group transactions, English was
the language used between the third generation and the maternal element of
the second generation. Portuguese was used between the third generation and
the paternal element of the second generation.
In out-group transactions with the local Arab population, Arabic was used;
in out-group transactions with colonial institutions such as school and church,
the strategy of apparent monolingualism in English, acquired from the first
and second generations, was consistently adopted and practised by the third
generation.
In its in-group and out-group transactions, the third generation made ample
use of their plurilingual repertoires and the synergy and serendipity acquired
from the plurilingual ethos to specifically select in each communicative situ-
ation, through stratification, English, Arabic, Portuguese or Konkani from
their repertoires. Members of the third generation narrate these stratificational
moves ‘between languages’ in their repertoires without knowing they are dif-
ferent languages. Rather than complete languages, these plurilingual practices
are narrated as being instinctually adequate responses to specific and varied
communicative situations. For example, the fact that Arabic was widely spoken
by the third generation in out-group transactions but never written is narrated
by B (third generation) as:

I didn’t know that I spoke Arabic. To me it was that language that appeared only in
the writing that I didn’t understand.
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 237

L, also of the third generation, recounts:

I was only ever monolingual as a child. I always felt I only spoke one language –
which I did, in each situation. It was only much later that I realized I spoke several
languages.

This resonates with Khubchandani’s (1998) belief that ethical plurilingualism

in a kshetra rejects and resists the objectification, formalization and separa-
tion of cultures and languages. Preferring dynamism and fuzziness, rather
than structured formality, language communication patterns in a kshetra are
not necessarily congruent (Khubchandani, 1998:15), and fluid zones appear:
‘affiliations between one language and another keep fluctuating with shifts
in the sociopolitical climate and pressures of acculturation. Populations have
other than linguistic criteria for determining in-group/out-group identity’.
Despite the fact that it is further removed spatially from The Family’s ori-
gins in India, the third generation continues to be oriented by and implements
the plurilingual ethos in its in-group and out-group linguistic transactions.
Significantly, this ethos was also acquired by three of the spouses of the third
generation (see Figure 2), who came from non-Indian plurilingual back-
grounds. Although as plurilinguals they may have already had a certain
openness to linguistic heterogeneity, unlike an Indian plurilingual kshetra,
they were more accustomed to associating the use of each language in their
repertoires with a specific geographic territory.

Figure 2. Third-generation spouses

Their acquisition of the plurilingual ethos through marriage is evidenced in

their narrations of unpleasant in-group encounters with a monolingual ethos
within the family kshetra. These encounters tend to be with the Anglophone
238 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

monolingual spouses who are part of the third generation; having been exposed
to the plurilingual ethos of The Family, they did indeed undergo a positive
change in attitude towards heterogeneity, as mentioned by Khubchandani
(1998). However, this modification appears to have been partial and is still
marked by coloniality and instances of epistemic racism.
The previous monolingual ethos of these Anglophone spouses seems to
have advanced from that of abyssal monolingualism – in which the existence
of other languages is negated and produced as nonexistent (Santos, 2007) – to
one of monolanguaging. As postulated by Veronelli (2015), monolanguaging
is a by-product of the coloniality of language. Unlike the coloniality of abyssal
monolingualism that negates the possibility of the very existence of other (non-
colonial, non-hegemonic) languages, monolanguaging accepts the possibility
of their existence but negates their status as being equal to colonial hegemonic
languages. In communicative transactions, this manifests in a perceived impa-
tience with the use of English by members of the family (other spouses of the
third generation) whose first language is not English (see Figure 2).

7 Concluding thoughts
What should we make, finally, of the duality played out in the out-group trans-
actions of the first, second and third generations of The Family, in which mono-
lingualism in the hegemonic language is feigned? As mentioned above, this
may be understood as a response to the plurilingual ethos that recommends,
through synergy, a move to accommodate one’s speech to one’s interlocu-
tor. Thus, in a context where communication is expected to occur between
monolinguals, members of The Family ‘become’ monolinguals. This means
that monolingualism and a monolingual ethos, as an ethical attitude, may be
an element incorporated into one’s repertoire, and called upon when required.
If such an attitude – as an ethos – becomes part of one’s repertoire, is the
plurilingual ethos also an element of a repertoire, or is it simply an ethical
attitude, acquired in a kshetra, that frames linguistic transactions rather than
becoming part of one? Khubchandani (1998) is not clear about this, but by
emphasizing fuzziness, an absence of clear-cut structures, and by giving pri-
mordial importance to the outcome of a linguistic transaction rather than to
its form, this discussion may be as unfruitful as trying to separate the dancer
from the dance.
Given the persistent use by three generations of The Family of the duality
implicit in apparent monolingualism, we suggest that its use may be strate-
gic; this may be understood heuristically in terms of Gramsci’s (1971:232)
conceptualizations of a war of manoeuvre and a war of position. Whereas the
former refers to a military strategy, involving the use of outright brute force,
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 239

the latter refers to a slower, indirect, political move. While Gramsci is refer-
ring to the exercise or taking of power, in the case of the plurilingual practices
of The Family, the feigning of out-group monolingualism may be seen as a
means of resisting the negating abyssal force of colonial monolingualism and
epistemic racism by performing as a monolingual in public, under the scru-
tiny of the hegemonic colonial authorities, as having mastered the language
of mastery. The resistance lies not in the actual feigning of monolingualism,
but in the continued practice of plurilingualism in situations distant from
hegemonic scrutiny. Implicit in this resistance is the perception of the double-
bind involved in mastering the language of mastery (Gordon 2006): given
that colonial epistemic racism sees the inferiority and partial humanity of the
colonized evidenced in their purportedly inferior language and knowledge,
if the colonized acquires and excels in the language and knowledge of the
colonizer, now being perceived as ‘fully human’, this becomes evidence of the
inferiority of their original language and the knowledge they have left behind.
Bearing this in mind, The Family adopted feigned monolingualism as a sur-
vival strategy, not only without the desire to become monolingual, but with the
clear desire to maintain its plurilingualism in order to non-confrontationally
resist monolingualism. This strategy mimics the workings of a war of position:
indirect and slow in achieving change, but nonetheless effective, as evidenced
by the survival of plurilingualism in The Family over three generations and
across continents.
Though a mere heuristic here, the choice of Gramsci’s (1971) wars of
manoeuvre and position was deliberate. The inequalities, injustices and vio-
lence of war are not dissimilar to those present in epistemic racism and dis-
seminated in the process of colonization, and its aftermath in globalization.
Our choice to adopt a southern/decolonial perspective in analyzing family
plurilingualism was made in consideration of the social, historic and ideo-
logical context of colonization that initially provoked The Family to migrate.
Subsequent globalization has continued to force further migration in The
Family generations later.
Although Spolsky and others may speak of the role of non-linguistic fac-
tors, language ideologies and even colonization and globalization in family
plurilingual policy, the violent dehumanizing effects of policies of colonization
and globalization are rarely discussed. Sevinç and Mirvahedi (2023) contribute
positively by discussing emotions as social constructs. However, given the
violence and injustice in contexts of colonization and globalization, rather
than generic emotion, it is suffering that comes to the fore.
As we have seen above, the abyssal logic of colonization produced the invis-
ibility of its victims and negated their subjecthood. Bhabha (2018) stressed the
continued negation of subjecthood to migrants in the contemporary violence
240 Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

of global migration. This violence and suffering become clearer when the per-
spective changes from a purportedly neutral – unmarked and therefore hege-
monic (see Menezes de Souza, 2019) – perspective to the situated southern/
decolonial approach adopted in this article: the silent suffering engendered by
the epistemic racism of the monolingual colonial policies in Portuguese India
that negated the existence of Konkani as a language of worth. The suffering in
British India generated by Grant’s (1792) Anglicism and Macaulay’s policy of
monolanguaging (reluctantly recognizing the existence of, but devaluing local
languages). The intense but silent suffering involved in The Family’s strategy of
apparent monolingualism. The present-day suffering that colours the words of
N2, L1 and L2, contemporary third generation spouses (Figure 2).
As stated above, when addressing modus operandi, a southern, decolonial
perspective lays bare the (often unintentional) complicity of academic objec-
tivity3 in the humanities (Bhabha 2018) when it shies away from critiquing
the unmarkedness of inequality and injustice in coloniality. From a southern,
decolonial perspective, it is not enough to speak of language ideologies and
non-linguistic factors in language policy; it is also necessary to address the
negation of subjecthood and suffering engendered by coloniality. In the case
of the plurilingual practices of The Family, the focus has been on resilience
and survival to celebrate the agency and subjecthood of the subjects involved.
Finally, encapsulating not only The Family’s plurilingual ethos, but also the
duality of its apparent monolingualism, is Khubchandani’s (1998:34) proposal
that language practices in plural societies should be understood as constitut-
ing a synergic network that promotes a two-pronged process: first, it inspires
‘trust in cross-cultural settings’; and second, and complementarily, it ‘empow-
ers the particular’ (the local, minor variant) without obliging it to assimilate
to the hegemonic. In this way, social cohesion and conviviality in the kshetra
are maintained through an ecology of interconnectedness without generat-
ing friction or assimilation. The kshetra, as an ecological and ethical space,
is clearly not a physical but an attitudinal, ethical and strategic construction.
This has permitted the kshetra of The Family to travel across space and time.
The contribution of The Family’s plurilingual practices to family language
policy in general is that it may be a persistent ethical attitude to linguistic and
cultural heterogeneity, rather than the actual use or maintenance of a specific
heritage language, which may be of significant value to transnational and
transgenerational plurilingual families.

About the author

Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza is Full Professor of English at the University of São
Paulo. His recent publications include Glocal Languages and Critical Intercultural
 Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza 241

Awareness (Routledge, 2019, with M. Guilherme), De-universalizing the Decolonial

(Gragoatá, 2021, with A. Duboc) and a chapter in A. Deumert and S. Makoni
(eds), From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics: Voices, Questions and
Alternatives (Multilingual Matters, 2023).

Notes
1. Although Khubchandani (1997, 1998) speaks interchangeably of multilingualism and
plurilingualism, he consistently refers to Indian society in the plural. Hence the option to main-
tain plurilingual in this text.
2. Here it is worth recalling Ranciére’s (2010:184) concept of ethics as a way of thinking
of connecting the manner of being of a particular space with its chosen principle of action.
Ranciére questions the validity of the traditional Western concept of ethics as the homogeneous
and universal application of moral normativity; it confuses fact and law (laws are not facts but
claims to facts on the part of only the hegemonic segment of the social group).
3. See, for example, Kumaravadivelu’s (2016) critique of the coloniality of persistent Western
academic nativespeakerism in applied linguistics and English language teaching that still privi-
leges native-speaker models and proficiencies of English despite their proclaimed objectivity. He
suggests less abstract discussion and more on-the-ground action to change the situation. This
has also been the path followed by The Family.

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