Page 67 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

social culture and knowledge of both these attributes are very much required to master the Language
of Research. This kind of proficiency cannot be obtained after registering for research or after the grant
for a research proposal. Language learning is a process that starts from childhood and is expected to
reach the ideal level to be useful for research gradually.
The researcher must master the skills to play the roles of encoder and decoder. Expressing the
mental concept of an author to the reader is a communication process, which functions through an
encoder and a decoder. It requires the use of language. One person first processes the message in
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his or her mind in either spoken or written form and then it becomes available outside the mind as
text. This text then is available to the other person who hears or reads it and decodes the message.
Once it is decoded, the message enters the mind of the decoder and then the roles of decoder and
encoder keep changing till the communication process is completed. If either of them fails to play
the role appropriately the research is jeopardized because any research depends solely on the
interpretation of the collected data. Therefore, to collect data accurately and to interpret it properly
the researcher requires language skills, and then alone he can perform both the roles efficiently. As
a society, in general, is ignoring the study of language, the knowledge of the language of children of
the present generations is deteriorating. The problem worsens when these children enrol in research.
If the researcher is not equipped with the proper medium i.e. the language of the presentation, then
expression becomes difficult because of limited vocabulary and unrefined language. Here starts the
copy-paste business. The ready constructions of sentences and ready contents (although sometimes
not matching with the thought expressed in the document) are borrowed from elsewhere and
presented as one’s own. When this copy-paste is transferred directly into the contents, it is plagiarism,
one more serious problem in research.

Language is a flexible entity and its interpretation depends on the mind-set of the interpreter.
Therefore, in language research, there is every possibility of being subjective in interpretation.
Whereas, objective thinking is the characteristic of any ideal research and therefore, the language
researcher has to take care not to fall prey to any of the above-mentioned pitfalls. The researcher must
understand the role of language in research and be equipped to use it skilfully and to the maximum,
because, “The means justify the end”.

The language-medium in which the researcher presents the theories and conclusions is an important
factor. For many reasons, a thesis is generally presented in English. One important reason is that the
English language has come down to us over the decades because of the pre-independence political
supremacy of the British rule and the pressures inflicted on Indian Academics. Gradually, English has
become the language of knowledge and technology and this has further boosted its importance. At
present, it has become the ground reality that we have to take the shelter of the English language if we
wish to take our research to the Global platform. Therefore, the research work on a topic from Sanskrit
literature is also presented in English. This is the same with almost all language researches. This harms
the language of research and also the research in language because any language has particular traits,
styles, and culture behind it, which cannot match with English. As a solution to this problem, some
universities, have started a new blended model of submission. The University allows the researcher or
research student to write the thesis in the original language from which the topic is chosen but asks
for 10 per cent of the contents in English as a summary, at the time of submission. In some cases the
process is reversed, the thesis has to be written in English and the summary can be in the language of
the topic. As most of the research students of this generation have completed their schooling through
English medium, English becomes the convenient language of expression and not Sanskrit although
the topic they may have selected is from Sanskrit literature. For Marathi speakers, the topic of research
and the language of expression, both are the same, that is, Marathi. Unfortunately, many students in

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