When the British withdrew from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, there were conflicts over land, religion, power, and language. Rabbi investigates the translingual and comparative rhetorical facets of debates over state languages in the former territory of East Pakistan.
Shakil Rabbi is assistant professor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, writing studies, and research methods.
While translingualism is widely known for deconstructing monolithic ideologies and labeled languages, Shakil Rabbi demonstrates how fluid semiotic resources can help construct a national identity and ‘mother tongue’ for Bangladesh. This is a much-needed work on the ways translingualism can achieve rhetorical sovereignty for newly independent postcolonial communities in the Global South.
