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REPORT --

WORKSHOP ON PhD RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Department of Linguistics,

University of Calcutta

8th

-9th

March, 2011

The Department of Linguistics had recently conducted a workshop on Research

Methodology at the College Street Campus on the 8th

and 9th

of March, 2011 to enlighten the

research candidates (who have applied for a PhD programme under the same university, as a part of their course study) about the professional methodologies and ethical customs of

carrying out a research work. Accordingly, experts from the respective fields from all overIndia were invited not to dictate but share their views with all the attendants and help the

latter make every effort towards their purported goal. The target audience for the workshopwas primarily the research scholars/candidates of the various departments in the Humanities

and Social Sciences of the University of Calcutta.Prof. Selvyn Jussy (Head of the Department of Linguistics), in association with the

administrative faculties of the university, had arranged the workshop and encouraged andmobilized the participation of and the interaction amongst the eminent and the imminent

scholars and researchers. Some of the current students of the M.A. course in Linguistics

under the leadership of their Head of the Department (Prof. Jussy) had volunteered the two-

day workshop.

The first session (10.30- 11.30 am) on day one kicked off with the formal registration

and enrollment of the names of the research candidates and was officially inaugurated by

Prof. Sanjukta Dasgupta (Dean, Faculty of Arts, UCAC, University of Calcutta) who

shared her subject-independent views on the esteem and the general principles of a PhD

research and played her modest role of a host thereby welcoming the guests and appraising

the initiative taken by the concerned persons to make this workshop a due success. She was

subsequently paid a Vote of Thanks by one of the research fellows, viz. Mr. SibangshuMukherjee on behalf of all the attendants.

The first session was followed by a tea break that lasted for fifteen minutes from

11.30 11.45am during which the participants actually started the informal interactionamongst themselves and thus were all set for the sessions to follow.

The second Session [11.45-1.15 pm] witnessed the seminal talk of Prof. K.V.

Subba Rao (Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan Chair Professor, HCU) onIndia as a Linguistic

Area where he highlighted the extreme amount of cross-familial (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian,

Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic being the four language families that he dealt with)

morpho-syntactic similarities (despite the notional linguistic diversity) and relative &

implicative language universals amongst the extant vernacular tongues spoken all over Indiabelonging to any of the above-mentioned language families. He drew three plausible reasonsto his findings on such similarities universal linguistic tendencies; language influence due

to mutual linguistic and cultural contact and admixture; and human intuitive tendencies(pertaining to related theories ofCognitivism and Nativist Hypothesis). The discussion and

questioning on what he said, besides casual mutual introductions and chats, continued evenafter his speech during the lunch break extending from 1.15 - 2 pm during which pre-

arranged lunch packets were served by the volunteers.

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The third and post-lunch session [2 3.30 pm] of the day comprised of the talks bytwo professors of the host University The Silent Side of Historyby Prof. Jharna Sanyal,

(Department of English, University of Calcutta) in which she emphasized the use, misuse,viability and taxonomy ofsilence in society and in the reflection of society in literature. The

audience however had also encouraged a lively discussion on the linguistic perspectives of

silence in relation to linguistic communication and sociolinguistic attributes. The other talk

was by Prof. Krishna Sen, (Department of English, University of Calcutta) on ReadingGender through Language which had both literary and sociolinguistic perspectives to it.

This was followed by a refreshing tea break from 3.30- 3-45pm.

The last session [3.45- 5.15 pm] of the day was duly completed by the speech of Dr.

Tanmoy Bhattacharya, (Department of Linguistics, Delhi University) on Deviation from

the Norm as a method and style.

The proceedings of the second day commenced with the first session of the day and

the fifth session (in continuity with the whole) of the workshop wherein during 10.30-11.30am Prof. Amita Chatterji (Vice-Chancellor, Presidency University, Kolkata) shared

her views on Epistemology. She discussed the utilities and the academic and non-academic perspectives of logic and logicality of the human mind, the underlying logical principles

behind Mathematics and any natural science, the methods of inductive and deductivehypothesis and just like the others this talk was very beneficial to the research candidates in

understanding how each of them is supposed to logically arrive at conclusions based on theirresearch, how to arrange the matter of research, how to make their work more presentable

and justifiable.

This was followed by a tea break, but actually what was served was coffee, from

11:45pm- 12 noon.

The sixth session made its way through the lively discussion and the meticulous data

provided by Dr. S.S. Bhattacharya, (Formerly Senior Research Officer, Language

Division) who in his discussion on The Census of India Survey presented before all the

existing linguistic scenario of India, the problems arising due to non-linguistic clerical

methods of treatment of languages and dialects, the language bias and attitudes of the citizens

and the enumerators, the different strategies taken by the central governmental authorities to

combat the problem of listing and naming and nationalizing and constitutionalizing the Indian

languages through the successive censuses in every decade.

This was followed by the lunch break from 12.45 1.45 pm during which Prof. SubbaRao bade farewell to all the attendants and went off to his own place and time.

The seventh Session (1.45- 2.30 pm) was again a joint session comprising thespeeches of two prominent persons of the host university Dr. Ratna Bandhopadhyay(Professor, Dept. of Library & Information Science, University of Calcutta) gave her

views onInformation Processing, Information Retrieval and Issues in Plagiarism where she

alerted the researchers on the methodologies of proper citation of the names of scholars,

books and articles; warned them against the malpractices of copyright theft or concealment of

intellectual property rights; and also discussed the availability of a highly useful separate

digital library within the Library Building in the same College street campus of the

University of Calcutta. Hers was succeeded by the speech of Prof. Ishita Mukhopadhyay

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(Dept of Economics, University of Calcutta) on Statistical Techniques and the use ofstatistical records and methodologies by potential fellow researchers, especially those who

are dealing with quantitative researches.

The Tea Break from 3.15- 3.30 pm marked the beginning of the last part of the two-

day workshop.

The eight and the final session comprised of two parts

3.30- 4.15 pm Interactive Session: Evaluating the Corpus chaired by Dr. S.S. Bhattacharya,

(Formerly Senior Research Officer, Language Division) where he also encouraged some

discussion on his previous talk on the Census Survey. This was followed by an Open Session

from 4.15- 5 pm where a discussion on the Mode ofDissertation Writingtook place by the

end of which the research candidates had got a fairly good idea on the entire technicalities

and procedural steps of doing any research work, especially one like that of a PhD research.

This last session was chaired by Dr. Surajit Mukhopadhyay (Registrar, CSSS, Kolkata).

Workshops like these are extremely useful to all who attend them and the Universityof Calcutta looks forward to arranging many more of them to brighten the future of all

directly or indirectly associated with its legacy.

15.03.2011.Arko Chakraborty.

PhD Research student,

Department of Linguistics,

University of Calcutta.