The “total linguistic fact” of Ulti, the secret language of the hijra-kotis in Bengal

What does the element of secrecy add to a register? What are the language ideologies and attitudes that influence the use, maintenance, and transmission of a secret register? Does secrecy have an impact on the structure of the register as well? We seek to address these questions through a close analysis of Ulti, a secret queer language spoken by the marginalized hijra-koti community in Bengal. We demonstrate how Ulti is encrypted at the lexical, phrasal, and structural levels, highlighting the most significant tool of encryption among them, mashi , which we argue is an indexical, symbolic marker of the transfeminine/hijra-koti gender identity of the speakers of Ulti. We turn to Silverstein’s methodology to deduce that mashi – as well as the unique lexicon of Ulti – operates only at the pragmatic realm of a language, not at the level of structure. Finally, we argue that while Ulti can be described as a register of Bangla, the element of secrecy plays a defining role in how it is used, maintained, and transmitted by the speakers, thus elevating it into the specialized category of a secret register.