Tarawara community a marginalized linguistic community: An ethnohistorical perspective

Abstract

The study aims to trace the history of Tarawara community Tehsil Oghi, district Mansehra in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Tarawara. community with 500 speakers of a dying language resides on a remote hilltop village, Dana. Dana is one of the many villages located in Bandi Shungli. The study assumes that marginalization and subsequent loss of a language spoken by an ethnic minority are rooted in socio-cultural and socio-historical contexts. The study has employed the theoretical lens of ethnohistorical perspective to understand the historical traces of substantial marginalization of Tarawara community which led to the present-day language shift and impending language loss of an undocumented language, Mankiyali. Drawing upon Braun and Clarke (2006), the study analyses the ethnographic data in six stages. The study has been an endeavor to understand the embedded themes appearing in interviews, focus groups, and participant observation of this study and to integrate it with the written resources. The ethnographic data and the available literature confirmed that the socio-political and socio-historical backgrounds result in the marginalization of the speakers in this group.