Prasannanshu Prasannanshu

Unarguably, the world is a global village today, and language and communication string together varied political, educational, medical, technological, technical, social and economic interests across the globe. In this scenario, not only vocational and technical, but, also, language and communication skills play a very significant role in creating employable human resources. Further, English is prominently an international language of communication. This paper attempts to propose a need-based curriculum of Linguistic and Communication Skills in vocational education.

This Article proposes to explore and establish the place of language, literature and communication skills in the curriculum of law. The pitfalls of legal education, without these elements, are shown with the help of a case study. The place of language, literature and communication skills in the framework of the legal education in India, as envisaged and regulated by the Bar council of India is discussed. This is followed by the recommendation of a curriculum, along with an introduction to the elements of the recommended curriculum, and interlinks that these elements share with law.

This article looks at the role of language, literature and communication skills in the curriculum of legal education. A brief look at the history and development of the subject, its current position and recommendations are briefly discussed. A look is cast on the prevailing situation of curricula and teachers of language, Literature and communication.

It is proposed to examine, in brief, the relationship between linguistics and cognition. With Chomsky's mentalist approach linguistics became a study of cognition, and a member of the cognitive sciences. The field of cognitive linguistics has arisen in part to formalize this relationship between linguistics and cognition. It represents a revolt against some of the established norms of linguistics, as practiced around the last two or three decades of the twentieth century, and also a logical culmination represented as adoption and application of the thinking prevalent in the cognitive sciences to the study of language. Cognitive linguistics is a relatively new filed, but it has dedicated adherents and an expanding base. The concerns emergent of the association between linguistics and cognition are worthwhile of pursuit by a wide range of cognitive scientists. A review of the perspectives on linguistics and cognition is presented here.

Diglossia is the sociolinguistic phenomenon of the existence of more than one variety of a language within a geographical location. The use of such varieties depends upon sociological factors like caste, or class. Diglossia may knowingly or unknowingly become a tool of exclusion and discrimination against certain communities. Here the prevalence of Diglossia has been discussed in the Indian context, with a more focused attention on Tamil. It was found that diglossia exists in Tamil, and amongst other factors caste defines it to the greatest extent. Diglossia is a well-known sociolinguistic phenomenon in which two varieties of language subsist as discernible members of a language spoken in the same geographical location. They generally do not form separate languages due to a variety of shared features, and on the other extreme, they cannot even be considered as dialects of the same language, as they do not fit the bill of a dialect as described by Varshney (1995), who says that a dialect is a regional variety of a given language, and characterizes diglossia as a situation where two widely divergent forms of the same language are in use by all members of the community under different conditions. He further notes that these language forms vary considerably at all levels of language viz. Sounds, words, grammar and meaning. Fergusson (1959) who originally gave the term diglossia, categorized as higher or lower, relative to each other, the stable-overtime varieties of language in use in diglossic communities. His conception of the high variety includes a highly codified variety learned mainly by formal education in which a body of literary works exists. He further conceived of the high variety as the one in which most of the formal and written transactions take place, but which is not used in ordinary transactions. Schiffman (1997) has summarized the main issues being explored, in the field of diglossia, after Fergusson (Post-1959), according to him the 'research on diglossia has concentrated on a number of variables and important questions: function, prestige, literary heritage, acquisition, standardization, stability, grammar, lexicon, phonology, the difference between diglossia and standard

This paper attempts to bring the focus on the origin of the relatively young field of 'Communication Skills' or 'Business Communication' which has come to be an integral part of various professional and management courses around the globe over the past few decades. In the modern day world, communication skills are becoming increasingly important and a lot of academic effort is being put into developing, testing and standardizing the concepts in this field. However, not much effort appears to have gone into tracing the history of this particular branch of learning. Keeping this in view this paper attempts to trace the origin of the concept of Communication Skills in the ancient literature of India. A two thousand year old Tamil text, viz. Tirukkural written by Tiruvalluvar who is also known as Aacharya Kundkunda Swami has been surveyed to unravel the thinking of those times regarding the concepts of 'communication'. This has been reviewed in light of the thoughts of modern scholars of the field. Some interesting pieces have been produced here that demonstrate that the field of Communication Skills is not without a history: people in India have for millennia been devoting attention to, and developing concepts for effective communications. Many such concepts and norms of communication have been handed down to us in the form of aphorisms or sayings. It is very likely that such norms must have been based upon earlier works, folk practices and in general must have been in tune with the wisdom of the time.