WYKŁAD dr. Bhima Lal Gautama z Tribhuvan University, Nepal pt. Language conflict in Nepalese classroom

Abstrakt

This presentation concerns issues related to language conflict in multilingual classroom in Kathmandu, a cosmopolitan capital city of Nepal. Newar, being the ethnic indigenous language of the city since long, has lost its speakers because of migration, urbanization and globalization impacts. Nepali and English languages are very common in educational institutions, which is creating conflict inside the classroom but the students are from multiple ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Additionally, the Newar language has been imposed as the compulsory subject in all public school by the metropolitan city council recently.

This study is based on 16 participants including teachers, students, and their parents from a purposively selected public school in the Kathmandu Metropolitan City where the individual interviews, personal narratives and observations were made in order to see the cause and impact of conflicts between or among the languages. The study found that some language-specific stereotypes and conflicts emerged among students and teachers in the classes attended by students from diverse language background. Not only students but also the teachers’ imposition of dominant language ideologies upset students not speaking the dominant languages as their mother tongues. The presentation concludes with recommendation for consideration of the management of current and potential classroom conflict through interventions in policy and school practices. It also suggests some practical tips for the solution to the linguistic conflicts in the plurilingual classroom contexts.