)l)OTHER TONGlJE SYNDROlVIE:A SWITCH OVER FROM BREAST TO BOTTLE

Debaprasad Bandyopadbyay Indian Statistical institute 1 Introduction ami cay fdota! tar bhafae kotha bolbe rastropunje ami cay mohul phutbe foukhinaar golap punje. "I demand Santals shall speak their language inthe United Nations! Idemand madhucaindica will blossom in the luxurious garden of roses." ----song sung and composed by Suman Chattopadhyay Though I was overwhelmed by the content of this recently composed Bangla lyric as it foregrounds the plea for Linguistic Human Right of a marginalized group, it is not a new experience to me. Duddu Sah, a follower of La Ian Shah and a nineteenth century Poet-singer, composed the following song at the colonial period in Bangla:

"mohommoderjsnmojodi hoto edeJe

behester kon bhaJa hoto balta e.fe

matnbhafa teje fobai

*arbi bhafa fikhlere bhai tate bhay phoeda to nay oboje]: "If Mohammad had been born here, what language of hell would he speak? There is no benefit, if one learns Arabic by shunning off one's mother tongue. " Though this song is not more than hundred years old, a strong feeling of preserving "mother tongue" or Linguistic Human Right is discernible in the song. As there is no concept

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of "Mother Tongue"(MT) in the so called Indo-European culture in general, the question immediately arises: how this new concept ofMT had a place in the so called "folk" -song? And not only in folksongs, but in the realm of administration, education and in every possible sphere. the word "mother" has been deployed in the realm ofland and language and subsequently proliferated in every sphere of discourses. It is surprising that even in the realm of"kathakata" (Rhythmic and sacred story-telling performance by a single person) the term "MT" got a special status as well as logic: Kumudbandhu Bhattacharya, an octogenarian storyteller, in an interview with noted historian Goutam Bhadra(I993), depicted an incident. Once he had an opportunity to perform in one of the Bengalee king's palace. As sastric (scriptural) religion does not allow women as a performer of religious rites, the queen questioned Kumudbandhu's wife's performance as a sacred story-teller. Kumudbandhu replied that the language queen was using was her MT. Ifmother, as a female, could teach language to her children, all the females have the right in scriptural religion. Kumudbandhu continued that it is only the mother who can introduce her children wi til the other, then, what is wrong with the female's participation in the story telling?

that the language development certainly depends on the mother's initiative to provide the child the input for Language Acquisition Device, as child's father is busy with non-household jobs. In fact, the author is trying to understand the connotation of "mother" in "MT", instigated by the male-chauvinist and sexist question, "Why is it not Father tongue?" Is it only due to the social proximity ofmother-chlld that gives birth to such notions? When "the name of the Father" is dominating the social sphere, and the Father's tongue is child's tongue, why the name of the dominated mother is nominated and affili ated to the objects like "Land" and "language"? (The paradox revealed in the last question has already been noted by Pattanayak 1998: 126) The author's imaginative effort to feminize the "tongue" ends in vein as he has learnt that the tenn "Ml'", since the tertn was first used, had never meant the vernacular, but rather its contrary. It is from the Pattanayak's book on multilingualism and mother-tongue education (1981). The author learnt that the term was used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, in stead ofl.atin, when they are "speaking from the pulpit" (Illich in Patttanayak, 1981 :24). That.is, the "boly mother ofthe Church" introduced this term and we inherited it from the Christianity as a part of our colonial legacy, thanks to the effort made by foreign missionaries in the transitional period of switching over from 18th Century. Mercantile Capitalism to 19th Century Industrial Capitalism. After the introduction of Indus trial Capitalism, in the first two decades of the 19th Century, British Government decided to carry on administrative jobs in vernacular (1837) tongues by replacing the language ofthe then administration Pharsi. Thu s begun in India the solidilication of different nation states under the umbrella of one Nation State "India" in a modular form. of languages. Ignoring the:fuzzy boundaries among communities (in loose sense of the term, Khubchandani 1997) and high level of Linguistic convergence due to the plurilingual ethos.

2 Gendering Language
The "mother" -word in the compound "MT" often makes the author remember the distant macro-social memory of matriarchy before mother was captivated for different reasons imposed by the father, The captivated mother rears her child up as long as the ·child (un animal a naissance prematiure) is not capable of standing alone. And the development of child's brain takes almost six years. In the mean time again she could be captivated for the other newborns and for other household work, What is important here to note

Debaprasad Bandvopadhyay

. Illich (ibid) aptly pointed out that the word 'MT was llltrodu~d into Indian languages in the eighteenth century as a translation from English. Thus mat(bhasa Umattnbhajal Of I mattr~bhajal) is a case oftranslation.lt is, of course, a derivative technical term, born out of translation. Sanskrit was a devabhasa 'god's tongue'. However that is not tbe end of the story. The autthor wants to say, following Partha Chatterjee's (1986) phrase, that it was al~o altered. The mother-cult in Indian bhakti ... eriod had p ~so ~ lffiP~ct on this translation. Not only in the case of "tongue ill ~~e una~ed construction of Indian Nation State, the metaphor of mother was also deployed. In the extremely masculine story of "anandamatb" by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, this meta~hor plaYe? a crucial role. In this novel by Bankimchandra, there 15 no question of metaphoric displacement ofJillli, the mother to the newly emerging Nation State. It is, in fact, equated. Even in ~he song "Vandamaiaram" (National song, according to the independent Indian Constitution), this equation is vivid enough.
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where Brahmanic culture projected their enemy as male demons.

Devi Durga, who was said to be born out of the amalgamated

male-gods' power, fought against the asuras 'male-demons' to reestablish the male-gods' sovereignty. That is the trace of matriarchy as incarnated in goddess Durga was also coercively se1ved by the then male-power. The paradox ofthe story is that the indigenous matriarchy was fighting with the patriarchal asuras ("demons" in later IndoAryan culture, but "gods" in the Iranian-counterpart) and later on matriarchy was subsumed by the priestly (obviously male) commune and was projected as well as represented as Brahmmical goddess by the way of coercive selving (" ..... a regimented formation of a self to be seen and emulated by the other that one is dominating." Dasgupta, ] 988: 125) This Hindu worldview ofthe ultimate reality incarnated in the sacred female body, does not have any impact on the Hindu attitude towards female as heterosexuality is controlled by the patriarchal values almost similar-to catholic church. In the mother church, Illich (Ibid: 2S) noted the term "holy mother the church" refers to an invisible! mystical reality from which alone institutionalized services ("services" rendered by the mother church that is an "assembly ofthe faithfuls whose love under the impulse of the Holy spirit engenders new life in the very act of meeting" Illich, ibid.) can be bestowed upon the faithfuls seeking salvation. Henceforth access to the good graces of this institutionalized mother on whom universally necessary salvation depends is entirely controlled by a hierarchy of ordained males. This gender -specific mythology of male hierarchies mediating access to the institutional source of life is without precedent (in the eight and ninth century). Compare this male rnusking with that of Hindu worship of mother goddesses. This on going discussion may be enriched from the comment made by Spivak in the context of analyzing Mahasweta Devi's story "Breast-Glver": "The ideological construct

!hi~ ~~uation .was .instigated by the power-worship or '[alai PY;]G (especially in Bengal) where eccelestial female power. is equated with ultimate and supreme reality or brahman (who 1S referred to as sah, Sanskrit "He" not sa: Sanskrit "She")' Therefore, there was a tension between ~atriarchaI power-worship and patriarchal B rahmini sm. This tension as noted ?y Dyson (1985: 301), the author thinks, is endangered by the difference between substratum female-worship and superstratum Brahminical male-worship. Kosambi's exploration on mother-cult may throw some lights on this issue as he (Kosambi 1~62 :91) noted that marginalized shri ne on any mother -goddess WIthout an "identificatio brahmanica" is found "outside the village". That is, mother was marginalized by the priestly commune. Though, Kosambi also observed (ibid: 109) that the mother goddess was.also hegemonically subsumed by the Brahminical cult (Kosambi u~ed the word s like," assimilation" "acculturation"). One can take an instance from the Hindu purana (Delli Bhagabat),
n .

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of ,India' is too deeply informed by the goddess-infected reversesexism ofthe Hindu majority. As long as there is this hegemonic cultural self-representation of India as a goddess-mother (Dissimulating the possibility that this mother is a slave), she will collapse under the burden ofthe immense expectations that such a self-representation permits. "(Spivak 1997:78, emphasis added). Precisely, the mother is maneuvered by the dominant male" other", marked by the female incarnation of goddess like 1 ashoda, (in the story "Breast Giver"), a professional mother who acted as a wetnurse for her male Lord's children. Spivak(ibid) noted that all the promoters of the Nation State exploit Jashoda is the name of Krishna's mother (Krishna is a mythical hero in the Hindu Myt~ology). It is not surprising that the mother -Nation equation also rrnpresses to construct the notion "MT". So, distinct relationship between Christian mother and Hindu mother was established by altering and appropriating Christian mother according to the shape ofHindu male gaze. And the notion of s~ch amalgamated mother was deployed to the paradigms like Nation-State and its subsequent modular forms (one of them is language). Thus the goal of Christian Evangelism had changed in the hands of the natives quite contrary to the imagination of the propounders of the Evangelist Philosophy, who thought to rescue black natives oflndian territory from the "obnoxious sin". Thus "MT" and "mother land" are epistemologically amalgamated notions rather than that of a "natural phenomenon". This equation ofmothedand and tongue was not obviously granted by the Muslim population, who were branded as "bad orient" vis a vis "good orient" (Said 1975:99) Hindus instigated by the Evangelist Philosophers. But that is another story. This discussion on the W inaugurates three distinct issues in he context oflanguage:

(a)

The mother to other or breast-to-bottle of Mother-tongue

switch-over. Industry aided by

(b) The proliferation professional s. (c) Mother-children

dyad in relation to language acquisition.

All these three issues are discussed in the next sections. 3 From Breast to Bottle In describing 'West to Orient' project of Columbus, Ilich (in Pattanayak: 1981) mentioned an overlooked name, EUo Antoniode Nebrija (15th c., contemporary to Columbus) who offered Queen Isabella a "tool" to colonize the language spoken by her own subjects. In fact, Nebrija wanted to replace the people's speech by implementing the grammar of Queen's lingua. What Dasgupta (1989) mentioned as internal colonization, began with this attempt to grammatize Queen's tongue in a Grammar book, "Grammatico de ta Castellana" (1492), the first in any European tongue, And thus begun the conquest by means of this engineered tool, "Grammar book", chemically synthesized weapon to suppress "untutored barbaric" speech in home and abroad. In this way the external colonization began. Nebrija himself speaks about the marriage of Empire and language (i.e. sword and MT and grammar book). So MT (Standard language) now needs tutors. Nebrija argued for standardizing a living language for the benefit of the newly invented Printing Press. Consequently the Official Ideology of "literacy" came into light. Here is a switch over from people's vernacular to Grammarians' language (Queen's language), or from vernacular learning to MT education, By this monopoly of the Grammarians' language compulsory education could be implemented in the public school's through a homogenous

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language of power And in this way the "Captive Speakers" (Dasgupta 1989) of "other" "dialects" (they are, in fact, defeated languages) have been born internally. In the case of external colonization, writing grammar books was a usual practice by standardizing one of the colony's language and making a "tool" (grammar book) for it. This switch over from vernacular' to an "officially taught mother tongue', according to lIlich, is, ".. switch from breast to bottle, from subsistence to welfare, from production for use to production for the market, from expectations divided between State and Church to a world where the Church is marginal, religion is privatized, and the State assumes the materialfunctions hitherto claimedonlyby the Church. " (Illich inPattanayakl981: IS). The metaphor of "breast to bottle" switch over stimulates us to look into the history of Industrialization in which the "nature" is defeated by the manufacturing of technological "culture". Reader may notice the phrase " in the Absence of Nurses" in the title of the discourse. The immediate questions that are coming into our mind are: where are the mothers? Why nurses? Why the nurses are absent'? Why do we need a packaged commodity to bring children up? Foucault tells us the revealing story of child rearing that can answer above questions, In brief, in the l Sth Century, the proliferation of anatomo-bio-political techniques conceived a distinct relation between breast-feeding and contraception. The medical and popular conception was that at the time of child rearing, the sexual intercourse would spoil the breast-milk. Therefore, the rich people sent their children to wet-nurse or professionalmother in orderto continue sexualintercoursewithout providing "contaminated" milk to children. However, the surviving rate of these detached children was too low. So, to avoid the mess, the conception of" Spoiled milk:" was broken by constraining

the regular pregnancy by introducing contraception, i.e.the concept ofrearing child 'Withoutprofessionals was preconditioned by noncontiguous pregnancy. However, in spite of that blood-flesh attachment of the dyad, there was also a need of separation of child from mother. Grosrichard, in the same conversation with Foucault, pointed out the psycho-physiological implication of the psychophysiological pleasure problem of weaning that leads to the ultimate separation by (a) Introducing a "spiked disc which the mother or nurse was to put on her teat. The child when it seeks experiences a pleasure mixed with pain, and if one increases the calibre of the spikes it has enough and detaches itself from the breast". (b) Introducing the feeding bottle and condensed milk or manufactured baby food. (c) Introducing the mythical notion of de shaped breast due to suckling. This European history of mother-child has also an impact on the colonial shaping of the mother as well as poor professional mother like Jashoda in the story stanadayini, " Breast Giver" by Mahasveta Devi that depicts politically decolonized India's professional mother's miserable story Jashoda, as a wet mother, after suckling other's children and giving birth to many children to sustainrnilk, ultimately suffered breast cancer and died. However, the profession of sucklingmother was endangered by the introduction offeeding bottle and baby food Industry, the artificial means for detachment of the dyad. The author does not agree with Kakkar(1981: 55 ) that the "controversy between breast and bottle feeding" is "false".He thinks, the switch over from breast to bottle has a larger implicationinunderstanding gestalt of "mothering" in its psycho-physiological connotations or in its

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metaphoric tongue",

senses as revealed in "mother land" and "mother

5.

Y switched over to Industrial capitalism

Then Y tried to define the boundary ofthe land. However, X can be extended or can be squeezed. They adopted a policy ofinclusion-exclusion under the land X_ Who is X, and who is not non- X? Y has chosen MY as an "authentic", "Pure" representation of P. In fact, the area where MV is spoken, it was the main industrialized centre. Nv,Sv,Wv,Evwere peripheralized. That is, non-linguistic Socio-economic factors were superimposed on the selection of MY, as" Standard" language, which "other" vs are supposed to follow. .

6.

4 Enhancement of professional mother

It may be thought that the professional mother or wetnurse, thus, were no longer needed, thanks to the invention of "feeding bottle", a commodity born out of industrial and technological revolution. However the need of professional mother, was and is still rampant. Due to the growth of professionalism as well as institutionalization of services rendered by the state since 18th C., in the context of industrial society, the need for professional mother increased for rearing up children of busy and affluent biological mother. [111ch (1981) noticed that the concept of MT of the motherland needs tutor, thanks to the institutionalization of land and language. One may remember, in this context, Andre Wajda's film 'Danton's first and last scene, where a chaperon taught Robbespiere's child the doctrines of new Bourgeois State by using "mild" coercion. This switch over from wet nurse to MT -tutor needs some clarifications. As the historical data was almost fully exploited by lIlich (1981), the author, in his clarification, will refer to only theoretical implications of such switch over in reference to Linguistics. 1. 2. Suppose, there is a land called X There are five linguistic variations (v) existed in this X, viz, NV,Sv,Wv,Ev and Mv All the five vs are supposed t'? be derived from "single" prestigious ancient language P.

7.

Cf- "Cf The term "standard" was taken from the vocabulary of'industrialized society, where the concept of prototypical "standard tool" is used. (Bandyopadhyay 1997)
8. lnstigated by the print capitalist imagination of communities, Wv revolted against this, Some of the Wv-speakers were n01 happy with the status "dialect" or "defeated language". They were granted the status of"language" and were exclud ed from the X-land. Then MY was gramaticalized. Sv,Nv,Ev were supposed to learn MV from tutor who fragmented the MY-standard with prescriptive rules.

9.

] O. Some rules were taken in toto from Pvcorpus, some were from Y or FP. Thus, grammar book had become a
constitution of epistemologically amalgamated rules, by which internal linguistic colonization was possible. 11. However, Mv is too local. Inhabitants of X-land were eager to know something 'International' which is obviously Y -language or FV 12. In this case; there should also be a tutor to teach "'P, Thus tutor had become an auntie (Dasgupta, 1993 ).

3.
4.

In one historical juncture, X was occupied by a Foreign Y (say FV).

Foreign Y , a mercantile Capitalist enterprise, found similarities with P with their ancient Foreign P or FP.

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] 3. The perip herial ized vs were given some exonyms according to the "free will" ofY and satellite native Y -ized elite, such as, apart from 'dialect', 'folk language' 'tribal language', 'patois', 'cockney' etc. 14. SV,Nv,Cv,Wv do not have their own choice of MT. They had to learn two "other" tongues, viz. MV (that is perceived as a " MT") and Y -tongue. (a) Though MY was in their immediate environment and though they could acquire MV following the pluriligual ethos, MV was alienated by the introduction of Grammar book by the tutor. (b) In case ofY, which was introduced as second language in the school order by the official literacy campaigner, "other" peripheralized vs also learned this Foreign Y via packaged tools. 15. Though we must know the fact as Walsh or Kapil Dev do not need to know rules of Aerodynamics to swing the ball, so also no one needs to know fragmented rules and norms of grammar via prescriptive grammar book, a feeding bottle or a packaged commodity.

management, one may notice the change of the perception of native tongue to MT in the confrontation of Other Tongue(Y, OT or FV [Englishj). In the context of Bengal, the adulterous relationship between MT and OT was intervened by Brahmin's tongue ( viz. Sanskritized Archaic code "Sadhu Bhasa''). To manage this triad one needs to define/ redefine the limits or boundary of "actual" tongue, i.e., one needs to select/accept/codify (=standardize) according to the need of centralized economy; secondly, one needs to spread/advertise/teach (= grammaticalize) that single tongue in a "professional" mannerwith the help ofa tool "grammar". The mediator's role as a language manager in the newly introduced imagined "nation state" always envisages "mothertongue to other-tongue" switch over-phenomena. This switch over, if at all occurs, is from mother's breast to feeding bottle, a packaged commodity for our nutrition. Thus, by encouraging a costly affair, language-mangers are propagating the learning of HighlForeign instead of maintaining the shadow play of plurilingual ethos (Illich inPattanayak 198]). The English language (FV) Industry along with its technology needs separate knowhow to be adopted by our parents. The know-how is as simple as the preparation ofbabyfood manufactured by multinationals like Nestle. As English(or any FVs) is not in our natural environment, parents of newborn should start speaking in English and always must switch to Star Movies, BBC World or any other foreign channels and in tbis way they must create an artificiaJEnglish environment (read simulated conditioning camp orin Dwell's term "joycamp") for their suitable boys or girls. They can also hire surrogated parents that are available in lieu of money in Kolkata for parents' interview in English Medium Schools. Subsequently, the M'I, in the days of multinational economy, is now reinterpreted as Mummy's tongue as the role model of traditional mother bas changed in these days of anglicized mother.

An the fifteen points highlight the complex network of "Nation'l-building in a modular- form oflanguage. The author's point is that though MY is MT to "original" MY speakers, it is not MT to "other" vs. Secondly, even to the MY speakers, the text book language is not also an MT, rather it is a construction of different historical processes, which is also reflected in the discursive formations of Grammar book Thirdly, in case of" other" vs excluding Sv,Nv,Wv, Ev, this constructed l\IIT is a farthest thing to be adopted compulsorily with the help ofa professional teacher.
If anyone looks into the precond itions and states of affair, keeping in mind the above de-sign, prevalent in Bengal at the time under the British Raj reagrding the issue of "language" and its

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Thus mummy's tongue or mother's tongue whatever it may be, it is an epistemologically amalgamated notion that is widely in vague in our day to day discourse. Take for an instance the pronouncement ofLallo Prasad Yadav. A peculiar dialectic of collaboration and non-collaboration from the part of the dalits, arose when in 1989, Mulaywn Singh Yadav began "angreji hapu" (banish English) movement, and in 1991, Lallo Prasad Yadav propagated "angreji Ie G1I"(introduce English) Movement. The desire of Lallo Yadav triggers Formal Elaboration of Social Hierarchy (FESH). Lallo's logic was expressed in a rhetoric, "Hindi is our mother, but English is a beautiful prostitute. " Though officially, Hindi is Lallo's MT, it is not hisMT in true sense ofthe term as under the Hindi-umbrella, there are 48 (including "Hindi", 1991 census) fun-fledged languages who have lost their identities as separate languages. However the imagery of English as a prostitute, apart from its sexist interpretation as well as gender bias, opens up a strategy of manipul ati ns English for the purpose ofFESHification. The Dalit as being a party in the Eurocentric decision-making body, they need a commodity, a prostitute and at a time they preserve their "inner domain" as it is incarnated in Lallo's imagery of alleged rusticity. Therefore, it is not a question of deleting MT, but of preserving mother and the other simultaneously. This order of things clearly shows the 'breast to bottle' switch-over phenomenon. It is not surprising that Dasgupta(1993)named English as "Auntie tongue" which handles the professional role ofF emale tutor in inducing English in the mind of her nieces and nephews. Industrialization produces many things, one of them is language-object that has been turned into a language-commodity by the virtue of Language-industry that is subsequently perceived as an MT -industry.

5 Consequences of the switch over: An ontological problem

Let us now explore the problem of"l" when "mother to other"- switch over takes place. First of all two things are to be noted: (a) consequences in case ofintemal colonization, when a supposed standard is thrust upon the captive speakers; (b) consequ ences in case 0 f external colonizati on, when a Foreign Language is thrust upon the captive speakers. I shall now discuss (b) in reference to Internalized Language(lL) rather than that of Externalized Language (EL) discussed above. I want to convey my ontological problems through such an FV that I had learned in my school by means of Anglo-vernacular method. Thus English as an FV, co-habits in my institutional environment but not in other part of my civil society. So, I did not think it as a cohabitation of MY and FV, but I thought it as an encroachment in the realm of my life-space. The FV was not present in my habitat and thus it was devoid of my ecology Some signal s, some word -lists in the form of stimulus were given and we cram, imitate and reproduce those stimuli without knowing to create and comprehend the infinite sets of'sentences. The Anglophone education, imposed upon us by the colonizer, produced a stimulus-response situation in the realm of education and schooling (i e. under the control of ideological state apparatus).

In this situation, my FV -competence is barred by my colonial

past. [hear an invisible voice of control preceding my voice and that voice compels me to live in a world of a bJack box of stimulusresponse situation. This is, of course, a problem with the packaged bottle or problem with the other due to partial loss of mother's breast. The problem may be represented as follows: 1 progressed from my initial state with my innate endowment Dr transcendental cogito or zero state (SJ

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I then wanted to attend a steady state Ss(because I want Formal Elaboration of my Social Hierarchy or FESH) in standard as well as in FV one after another. In case ofFV, that was introduced to me sometimes, I was not starting from but from an initial state S as I had somehow aoquired Ll in highly condensed and fragmented forms. Therefore "1" as a creative speaking subject is not a stable subject as master of system endowed with the transcendental ego, but an unstable subject who is disrupted by the symbolic order of language(Externalized Language) as weU as institutional order, splitting o'ut of the continuum of semiotic chora( in Lacan's term, "imaginary"). This splitting or dividing point between semiotic continuum and symbolic order, according to Kristeva, there is a thetic or static or structuring stage of language. For Kristeva(1973), handling only such thetic structuring period of the speaking subject by deploying analytical grammatical procedures, that only handles the phenotext (rule-governed phenomenon) is inadequate. Kristeva encompassed this lack in her proposed semanalysis, where she dealt with language as both drive-governed tact and something within the social space. Thus Kristeva opened up an arena that is not confined to the "ideal speaker-hearer" in a laboratory state, but she proposed the presence of genotext (deviations) within the phenotext. This is the juncture, where one can talk about the po ssibility of'P (psi) - P as a category. The I-Language in Speaking Subject is, as Barthes(1975) pointed out, devoid ofhislher history,childhood configurationand neurotic element. But ifanyone tries to find the locus standi of such S inthe behavioural manipulative world, s/he may find that the subjectificarion of Speaking Subject's body is under tbe control of dispotifs.lor LAD, a physicalorgan cannot be imaginedwithout accommodating a social interpretation of psyche, and that is missing in the above formalization of'watertight essence of "1"as
I

such. According to this proposed interpretation l-Language of Speaking Subject, being contaminated by the outside sociality or unweilt, is not something transcendental or something outside psychosocial E and it isequalIy viable to psycho-social properties, which I abbreviated as 'P(psi)-P. These \f'-P reasserts that the being is always in the being-in-the-Isocialjworld as well as being-for -others, The proposed hypothesis of the '¥-P canbe subscribed by Kristeva's semanalysis, where meaning is conceived as a signifying process rather than a sign system. Kristeva remarked: "Within this process one might see the release and subsequent articulation of the drives as constrained by the social code yet not reducible to the language system as a genotext and as the signifying system as it presents itself to phenomenological intuition as a phenotext; describable in terms of structure, or of competence/performance .... The presence of genotext within the phenotext is indicated by ... a semiotic disposition" (1973). I observed it was difficult to attend Ss in both the L1 and L2 as I was under the control of different institutions surrounding me: family, schools, religious institutions, media, professional groups etc. All these institutions as "other" manipulate my docile body and disrupt the creative speaking. This problem of speaking subject under the control of institutions had already been discussed by Althusser, Barthes, Lacan, Bernstein, Illich (for detailed discussion see Bandyopadbyay 1996) and Chomsky as Chomsky said: "Of course one can design a restricted environment in which such control and such patterns ... can be demonstrated, but there is no reason to suppose that any more is learned

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about the range of human potentialities by such methods than would be learned by observing humans in prison or an anny- or in many a schoolroom." (1972: 114, emphasis added) In case of my L I -learning, I was bound by a mental regimentation due to the mismatch between my family-order and school-order to repeat cliches, stereotypes, rather than to create infinite sets of sentences as Iwas taught the Communicative Competence(Dell Hymes-brand). phatic commune and a packaged commodlty(feeding bottle)- 'Prescriptive Grammar,' a constitution to regulate my language in a ritualistic manner. Here the body of MT (thus the body of my mother) is fragmented. On the other hand I had to acquire Ss in the other's tongue. I was devoid of my mother's breast and thus my weaning complex (la sevrage) begun It was due to the supposed MT (that is not actually my MT) and FV, I was depleted of my creative Language. 6 Conclusion "For the writer, however, this object exists: it is not the language, it is the MT The writer is someone, who plays wit h his mother's body .... " ----Bartbes (1975 :37) The total endeavour to relate mother-child with the language-acquisition process is nothing but a fictitious story as the biological mother has nothing to do with the languageobject per se in a given all pervading patriarchal culture except to introduce substantial inputs to the child like "other" associates of the child. Barthes is quite wrong to consider writer as player of mother's body. Symbolic orders are only symbolic orders after all. And "tongue as mother" metaphor is nothing but politico-theosophical construct that, later on, has become a technical term in the discursive formation of administration and academics. And this is also a "historical a prioriaround which the discursive formation and strategies are proliferated. The indecision of Indian census to determine the boundary ofMT from

time to time (Pattanayak 1998: 125) as well as Derrida's recent deconstructive endeavour ( 1998) to det e1111in " l" as aJ not as a e speaker of MT' tell us the same story: culture supp lies us notion; we then til' to make the notations without considering its hollowness and we neutralize that symbol by deploying different "scientific" and u cultural " methods. However the symbolic order retains its symbolism. The whole, discursive formation circling around MT is endowed here with the metaphoric illness and thus termed as "(M)oiher Tongue Syndrome ". References
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