Bilingualism and Intergroup Relationship in Tribal and Non-Tribal Contact Situations 163 BILINGUALISM AND INTERGROUP RELATIONSHIP IN TRIBAL AND NON-TRIBAL CONTACT SITUATIONS

Multilingual societies are characterised by complex relationship between languages and linguistic groups. There are several sociolinguistic and social psychological features on which multilingual societies have been held to be quite different from the dominant monolingual societies (Mohanty, 1994a, 2004). Individual and group bi- or multilingualism resulting from language contact are characterised as stable in multi-lingual societies, whereas bilingualism in dominant monolingual societies are usually transitional in nature. For example, in U.S.A., the first generation of immigrants is usually monolingual in native language; the second generation is bilingual in English and native language and the third generation is monolingual in English. Thus, bilingualism is a point in transition between monolingualism in native language to monolingualism in English. In multilingual societies like India, contact between different linguistic communities usually leads to stable bilingualism in which minority contact groups maintain their languages and learn the language of the majority contact group. Unlike those western societies with dominant monolingual norms, language contact in India is associated with language maintenance rather than shift. It has bee