A Socio-Linguistic Survey of Mauritius (An Old and Rare Book)

This monograph, A Sociolinguistic Study of Mauritius, is the result of a pilot project undertaken jointly by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India) and Mahatma Gandhi ji Institute (Government of Mauritius) under the Indo-Mauritius Cultural Exchange Programme in 1986, Dr G.S. Rao and Ms. Rekha Sharma conducted told work for a short period of six weeks. and analysed the data after their return from Mauritius. Meanwhile Dr. Rao joined IGNOU in 1986 on deputation from CIIL but continued to work on the manuscript from there. I must thank the authorities of IGNOU fur sparing Dr. Rao’s services for 2 period of three months in 1987 to complete the manuscript in collaboration with Ms. Rekha Sharma. The monograph studies the linguistic situation in multilingual and multi-racial Mauritius from several angles viz. use’ of language in different domains, perceptions and attitudes of speakers towards their languages, the functions of languages in Mauritius society, educational use and expectations, media use and so on. The study, though limited in scope, highlighted the fact that Indian languages are on the decline. It is gratifying to note that the Government of Mauritius is extending tremendous Support to the teaching of Indian languages in schools and_ their use in the media. The Government of India, on its part, is sending its language specialists every now and then to bolster the language teaching programme in Mauritius and also to train their language teachers. As part of this cooperative activity a group of Indian language teachers from Mauritius have visited the CIIL in the beginning of this year under a UGC sponsored programme.

I hope that the cooperation between the two institutions will further develop into more academic projects in the years to come. I congratulate the authors for their meticulous and scholarly work. It is earnestly hoped that such academic pursuits will bind the peoples of India and Mauritius together in their common endeavour to discover each other.

I wish to thank Mr. Uttam Bissondoyal, Director of M. G.I. in Mauritius who originated the idea of joint research undertaking between our two institutions. This is just the beginning and I hope that there will be more such joint programmes in future.

**Contents and Sample Pages**