Between Convergence and Divergence: Reformatting Language Purism in the Montreal Tamil Diasporas

This article examines how ideologies of language purism are reformatted by creating interdiscursive links across spatial and temporal scales. I trace convergences and divergences between South Asian and Québécois sociohistorical regimes of language purism as they pertain to the contemporary experiences of Montreal's Tamil diasporas. Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils in Montreal emphasize their status differences by claiming that the former speak a modern “vernacular” Tamil and the latter speak an ancient “literary” Tamil. The segregation and purification of these social groups and languages depend upon the intergenerational reproduction of scalar boundaries between linguistic forms, interlocutors, and decentered contexts. [Tamils, Quebec, diaspora, linguistic purism, spatiotemporal scales]