'Apun Jaise Tapori': Mirroring the Social Hierarchy Through the Incorporation of Tapori Language in Rajkumar Hirani’s Munna Bhai Series
Year: 2020
Type: preprint
Abstract: The interconnectivity between language and social power fabricates the narratives of social hierarchy and domination. Social relations of power, domination, or mutual respect are embedded in interaction between people expressing through language. An analysis of the language will indicate power relations being created, accepted, or contested. Cinema, a medium of conversation, finds its articulation through language. Tapori, an admixture of Bombaiya Hindi, embodies a polyglot culture that does not fix itself within a traditional Hindi/Urdu conflict, rather enters a space where a multilingual street culture inflected with diverse regional accents can be captured in the speaking of working class. Rajkumar Hirani’s directorial endeavors, Munna Bhai series (2003 and 2006), incorporate the tapori language and culture for his protagonist Munna Bhai to mirror the class conflicts and social hierarchy between the elite and working class people. By analyzing the tapori culture from social and linguistic perspectives and following Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and taste, this paper thus seeks to answer the following questions: How is Bombaiya Hindi positioned compared to standard Hindi? If tapori as a subculture intermingles with dominant language Hindi, does it have the possibility of social contamination in terms of linguistic hierarchy? What social functions are assigned to tapori language?
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Praggnaparamita Biswas
Institution: The Asiatic Society of Mumbai
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3215311631