Centre for Linguistics & Cultural Studies
An interdisciplinary centre established under the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), dedicated to the scientific documentation, digital archiving, and revitalisation of endangered and indigenous languages of Northeast India and Bodoland.
Preserving Linguistic Diversity & Indigenous Knowledge Systems
The Centre for Linguistics and Cultural Studies (CLCS) under the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, CIT Kokrajhar was established in 2019 with the explicit mission of conducting substantial, empirical research on the lesser-known, developing, and endangered languages of Northeast India, and revitalizing them through direct and indirect institutional interventions.
Every language embodies the irreplaceable cultural, ecological, and historical wisdom of a civilization. The loss of any language is an irrevocable impoverishment of global human heritage. According to the UNESCO report Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, out of roughly 7,000 spoken languages on Earth, over 2,500 face imminent extinction. In India alone, 196 languages are recognized as endangered—with a substantial concentration situated in the biodiverse Northeast.
Many indigenous language communities in the Northeast and Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) have speaker populations ranging from merely 1,000 to 10,000. With younger generations rapidly shifting toward dominant regional or global tongues for economic mobility, these indigenous languages face grave threats of extinction. CLCS responds by applying state-of-the-art computational speech and language technologies, field documentation, and community literacy partnerships.
Concurrently, 21st-century technological transformations demand interdisciplinary cultural studies bridging Film, Anthropology, Economics, Tourism, History, Geography, Ecology, and Digital Media. CLCS champions systematic field research, documentation, archival preservation, and revitalization of indigenous cultural traits and values to strengthen mutual respect and national integration.
Centre Factsheet
Established under Humanities & Social Sciences
Endangered Indian Languages in UNESCO Focus
Primary Focal Geography & Indigenous Communities
Multi-modal audio, video, phonetic and textual documentation
Fostering mutual appreciation across ethnic communities, bridging cultural traditions, and advancing indigenous linguistic rights within the constitutional framework of India.
Vision of the Centre
- To empower endangered language communities to revitalize and sustain their mother tongues, instilling pride and linguistic loyalty among native speakers.
- To discover, document, and illuminate the significance of traditional cultural values and heritage across the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) and Northeast India.
Mission of the Centre
- To position the Centre as a national and international centre of excellence specializing in endangered language documentation and indigenous cultural preservation.
- To build a comprehensive digital repository comprising descriptive grammars, multilingual dictionaries, lexicons, and acoustic recordings.
- To digitally archive living folklore, oral literatures, traditional songs, and cultural expressions of indigenous communities of BTR and the Northeast.
Prime Objectives of the Centre
Inter-Disciplinary Research
Undertake inter-departmental and inter-disciplinary research programs investigating endangered and indigenous languages.
Fieldwork & Audio-Visual Documentation
Execute rigorous fieldwork, archiving, and analysis using modern speech and language technologies in universally accessible digital audio and video formats.
Grammars, Dictionaries & Monographs
Author and publish descriptive grammars, lexicons, ethno-linguistic treatises, and compilations of oral folklore and literature.
Language & Dialect Atlases
Develop linguistic cartography and dialect atlases documenting geographical distributions, phonetic variations, and language boundaries.
Workshops & Academic Conclaves
Organize high-impact research seminars, elicitation workshops, and international conferences on language endangerment and preservation.
Capacity Building in Field Linguistics
Train faculty and student scholars in Lexicography, phonetic transcription, Field Linguistics, and modern linguistic data management systems.
Open Access Community Archives
Return research outcomes directly to language communities via accessible analogue and digital archives, teaching material, and cultural artifacts.
Orthography & Literacy Primers
Formulate standardized scripts, alphabet charts, and pedagogical primers to facilitate primary literacy and language vitality.
Public Digital Repository (Internet e-Access)
Digitize all gathered field texts, oral narratives, and corpora for worldwide web access and scholarly open-source inquiry.
Autonomous Centre Evolution
Grow from its initial inter-departmental incubator under HSS into an independent premier institute fully devoted to indigenous and endangered languages.
Core Strategic Thrusts & Implementation Framework
Systematic action plans guiding research, pedagogy, community empowerment, and technology integration through Vision 2030.
Outstanding Research
Key Targets:
- Publish multilingual dictionaries for target languages.
- Author comprehensive descriptive grammars.
- Build digital corpus of oral narratives & folk songs.
- Archive traditional ecological knowledge systems.
Excellent Teaching-Learning
Academic Horizons:
- Launch PhD & Post-Doctoral research programs.
- MA in Linguistics & Endangered Languages.
- Inter-departmental credit courses for B.Tech & B.Des students.
- Summer institutes in linguistic data science.
Social Responsibility
Community Revival:
- Produce children's storybooks & literacy primers.
- Revitalize mother tongues via primary school curricula.
- Celebrate indigenous festivals and oral lore.
- Intergenerational language workshops with elders.
Vision 2030 Enablers
Modernization Steps:
- Institutional Consortium for BTR & NE Languages.
- NLP, OCR & speech-to-text datasets for tribal tongues.
- Digital keyboards and Unicode script standardization.
- Global language learning (Japanese, French, German).
Connecting Humanities, Engineering & Digital Design
The Centre actively draws upon and partners with departments across CIT Kokrajhar—collaborating with Computer Science & Engineering for speech processing and language modeling, Multimedia Communication & Design for digital storytelling and interactive cultural archives, and the Central Library for repository indexing.