Embedding Subversion and Gender Identity

Embedding Subversion and Gender Identity: ‘Ulti’, the Secret Language of the Hijra-Koti Community opens a window on to the world of the hijra-koti community in West Bengal. This book seeks to contextualize the community within their sociocultural and multilingual ecosystem, and understand the significance of their relationship with Ulti, the secret language spoken by them. Employing a combination of ethnographic and linguistic methodologies of data elicitation, the examines how social conditions lead to the development of a language’s lexicon and grammar, as well as the role language plays in building a subculture and constructing the identity of its speakers.
The book is especially interested in examining the relationship between language and gender – as well as between social gender and grammatical gender – in the context of Ulti. Bangla is a language without grammatical gender; it does not provide hijras or kotis with the linguistic tools required to express their gender.