Language Maintenance Among Garo Community Members in Bangladesh

Abstract

For last few decades, there has been a growing interest in language contact research on different minority communities around the world. This study is an in-depth qualitative research on language maintenance among Garo community members in Bangladesh. Participants’ language use and preference in different domains: home domain, friendship domain, religion domain and media domain were investigated through individual in-depth semi-structured interviews using the sociolinguistic questionnaire. Analyzing participants’ language use and preference inside and outside the community, this study has provided a broad picture of language maintenance among Garo people and tried to seek out what factors and sectors are playing a significant role in maintaining the Mandi language and shift from Mandi to Bangla despite the pressure of national language Bangla. Finally, it can be said that the strong willingness of Garo community members to protect their language is helping them to keep alive their mother tongue despite having lots of pressure from Bangla and English language.