From Dialects to a Common Tongue: A Sociolinguistic Study on Language Convergence Between Dhaka and Barishal Speakers in Bangladesh

This research examines the continuing change in spoken Bengali in Bangladesh around an emerging mixed “common accent” due to growing contacts among its regional speakers particularly those from Dhaka and Barishal. And with social mobility, the progression of education, the march of the media, with all of these hordes of people who used to be separated by divisions thrown together in a shared space, especially in towns, their dialects are slowly merging together in such a way that the who, when and where of these phrases are now buried in the sands of time for a great many of them.Adopting a qualitative approach, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 native speakers, 15 each from Barisal and Dhaka, representing different age groups and professions. They were also asked vocabulary, pronunciation and native word origin awareness. Close similarity, blending and sound change patterns were noted in the analysis of lexical structures. Results of study indicated that a considerable proportion of daily vocabulary could no longer be exclusively identified with Barishali or Dhakaiya dialects. Instead, they are tending towards a communized phonology across the region, favoring intelligibility over locality. In particular it was a younger age-group who are likely to reject strong regional accents, and to unconsciously change their speech towards an ‘in-between’ accent that they hear on TV or in the classroom. Also, a lot of the speakers were ignorant of the source division-wisdom of the words they spoke, thus undermining the lingual lineage. The study suggests that Bangladesh is experiencing an organic process of linguistic convergence facilitated by internal migration, education and urbanization that is leading to the formation of a “common tongue” reflective of collective identity, but which also has the potential to either wipe out regional linguistic variations or breathe new life into these older forms. Although these changes are not restricted to a particular sociolect within the population. They do form components of the local speech and may be stylistically indexed; these issues are more fully addressed in future work.