Abstract
The chapter attends to some fundamental questions in understanding the role of language in the commodification process: What exactly is commodified under what conditions? What other symbolic and material resources are convertible and valued as resources, where and for what purposes? The chapter makes a case that individuals from marginalized ethnic communities in tourism destinations utilize language and other semiotic-material resources as they negotiate their position, often in an ambivalent way, in the rapidly transforming political and economic environment.
Sociolinguistics and applied linguistics scholarship has shown that recent developments in the political economy have led to the commodification of language both as a communication tool as well as a material to be exchanged in the late capitalist market. This chapter begins with a historical overview of how ethnicity has been understood in Nepali politics and tourism with a particular emphasis on marginalized communities. The findings have shown that language and the semiotics of signs and place are deployed as resources to territorialize, deterritorialize, and reterritorialize the Himalayan village in the context of heritage tourism. The chapter focuses on a Tamang village in the Himalayas, Nepal and examines language as a political and an economic resource. Discourses about ethnicity in the past have influenced and been shaped by local politics and the global tourism markets in Nepal. As the villagers of Gatlang situate ethnicity within the nexus between the tourism market and national politics, they have started experiencing new tensions.