Adieu Prof Frans Manjali
June 14 marks the end of an era in the study of languages in India.
Franson Manjali is a significant figure in my academic growth. He is a person who I feared, respected and loved. His contributions to linguistics and language studies are immense. I am not the right person to comment on his mammoth work. I shall tell here what I feared about Franson. Respect and love shall follow soon.
I enrolled into JNU in the 4th Week of July 2010. When I registered for a Master's in Linguistics, I was not alien to the field. I had a fair amount of exposure to Language Teaching and applied linguistics. However, in the first week of JNU, I realised I could not express to my fellow first years what linguistics is and what I want to do after a MA in Linguistics. In contrast, many of my peers in other programs knew well what their discipline was and what they wanted to do after a Master's. So I was looking forward to my first class, Introduction to Linguistics. I was hoping that a Professor would walk into the class and demystify Linguistics in the first lecture of the program. And I was eagerly waiting to faithfully transcribe what the professor would say, learn it by heart and answer everyone who asked me what linguistics is.
Open the first class of linguistics: Franson Manjali stood in room no. 101 Sllcs welcoming students. He stood in the front of the class with his pony-tailed silver hair, lose fitting clothes and sandals. He took a short introduction of us, then looked at all of us and asked us what is linguistics? I was sitting in the second or third row to his right with a fellow student as eager as me. Franson repeats the same question with a deeper voice. The class was silent, and after a few seconds, Franson produced one of the rarest consonants possible. Prrrr.
All the students in class looked at each other's faces. It was the first day of linguistics we were not introduced yet to Phonetic or Phonetic Alphabets. And we were yet to learn what this strange sound was. After this, Manjali talked about the tower of Babel and various other beliefs regarding the origin and diversification of languages. And how people have tried to explain the phenomenon of language. I later learnt to transcribe Franson's prrr as a bilabial trill and gloss it as rejection, and cynicism.
His introduction to linguistics radically varied from regular linguistics 101. Our course book was Landmark Thoughts in Linguistics by Roy Harris. And my first reading in linguistics was an abridged version of Plato's dialogue on names: Cratylus. His introduction to linguistics was fascinating, to say the least, and challenging at its best. It made me more unsettled than ever before. I did not learn anything about the subfield of linguistics, the objects of study in linguistics or any well-established facts about human linguistics ability. But I learnt a bit about some central debates on language and in linguistics: is language natural or is it nurtured; Is language static or dynamic; Is language what is expressed or what is known; Is lexical meaning motivated or arbitrary; Is language regular or irregular; is language universal or relative; is language biological or social. Is language a system or practice? Is linguistics a science?
His introduction to linguistics problematised every possible understanding of language. He showed us how something as pervasive as language continues to be an enigma despite receiving attention from humanity's best minds(embodied?). He presented to us an epistemic trajectory of Western thoughts about language. However, my expectations were never met. Maybe it was for good. Because whenever someone asks me what linguistics is, I remember Franson. Rember him with a strange fear. A fear that checks me every time that instructs me every time not to reduce a field of study as ancient as academia itself to the mere forms of language. Fear of Franson's Prrr continues to influence my thought process today. His lessons from the first semester of my Master's guide me even today to be mindful of how I hold myself as a linguist.