Language Maintenance and Language Shift of Poguli Spoken in Jammu and Kashmir, India

Abstract

The present paper involves a comprehensive language maintenance and shift of Poguli. It seeks to look at their sociolinguistic profile to understand the influence of the majority ethnic/linguistic community with their language on this group. It focuses on the language maintenance and language shift of the Poguli speech community living in Chinab valley of Jammu and Kashmir and tries to study and understand their linguistic usage, patterns of language use, identity, status, and patterns of language use occurring in this community. To make matters more interesting, this Poguli speech community is dominated by many neighbouring languages and attempts to look at the levels of influence of these languages on this community. The paper is an attempt to postulate where this linguistic battle is likely to lead.