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The Kalimah In the Kaleidophone: Ranges of Multivocallty in Bangladeshi Muslim's Discourses
Author(s) -
Wilce James M.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1525/eth.1998.26.2.229
Subject(s) - bengali , ideology , identity (music) , islam , ethnic group , sociology , character (mathematics) , pronoun , linguistics , gender studies , literature , aesthetics , history , anthropology , philosophy , art , political science , politics , law , geometry , mathematics , archaeology
Bengali Muslims have long debated the place of religion, ideology, literary heritage, ethnicity, and various nationalisms in their identity. Contemporary identity ferment is exemplified in each of five examples of discourse explored herein. Replaying these voices "kaleidophonically" uncovers the vital, resistant, "fundamentally liberating" character of multivocality in Bengali Muslims' discourse, particularly in codeswitching, reported speech, and pronoun play. Although each of the voices acknowledges the kalimah of Islam, their multivocality belies simple formulations of identity. The translinguistics of Bakhtin informs the analysis of how linguistic play works to reconstitute what it is to be Bengali and Muslim.