Journal of Integrative and Innovative Humanities

Sociolinguistic Survey of the Mal-Prai (“Lua”) speech varieties spoken in Nan Province, Thailand

Alexander Jeske — 2025-11-30

This article shares the results of the sociolinguistic survey of the “Lua Bo Kluea” (LBK) speech community in Bo Kluea District, Nan Province, Thailand. The survey research aimed to further investigate the language situation of the “Lua Bo Kluea” speech community in Bo Kluea District, Nan Province, Thailand, building on the research documented in (Jeske, 2022) and filling in the gaps from that research.

The first purpose of the research was to assess how well the “Lua Bo Kluea” understand the Prai ‘R/Y’ speakers of Chiang Klang District, since this closely-related speech variety already has a written form and a body of literature materials available. If the LBK speakers do understand Prai ‘R/Y’ adequately, the second purpose was to assess the attitudes towards the Prai ‘R/Y’ language variety and its speakers. If the attitudes are positive, the next step was to assess if the “Lua Bo Kluea” would consider using the existing Prai ‘R/Y’ literature materials.

The research methods included comprehension testing, dialect mapping and interviews regarding LBK speakers’ comprehension of and attitudes towards the Prai ‘R/Y’ speech variant which already has a body of literature. Results showed low tested comprehension (RTT village average scores ranging from 58% to 78%, with an overall average score of 71%). Results also showed low perceived comprehension, low levels of contact, communication difficulties, and a high perceived degree of difference between these speech varieties. Thus, we conclude that the Lua people from Bo Kluea District cannot understand the Prai ‘R/Y’ speech variety adequately without some type of adaptation, training, or more contact promotion. The people from Bo Kluea District generally have positive attitudes toward the Prai ‘R/Y’ people. They identify as part of the same ethnic and linguistic group and are open to intermarriage among them. However, both adaptation (checking the words, expressing it in the LBK dialect) and literacy training (teaching people to read the script) would be needed in order to be able to use the existing Prai literature materials in their communities.

Aspect Markers in Prai: A Reanalysis in Comparative Austroasiatic Context

F. Jason Diller — 2025-11-30

This study investigates the grammatical aspect system of Prai (ISO 639: prt), an Austroasiatic language spoken in northern Thailand and Laos. Research was conducted by corpus analysis of traditional folktale narratives and literature created by Prai working for Prai literacy and language development. Three primary aspect markers are identified and analyzed: ʔuʔ, læ:o and ʔæm. This study builds on the linguistic descriptions of Jordan (1985) and Malapol (1989) and offers an alternative analysis of læ:o in particular.

Findings demonstrate the semantic functions of these aspect markers: ʔuʔ indicates continuative aspect, læ:o marks a new situation created after a change of state (NSIT), and ʔæm is a completive marker that signifies comprehensive completion of an action. The aspect system of two closely related Austroasiatic languages (Khmu (two varieties, ISO 639: kjg) and Mlabri, ISO 639: mra) and one other Austroasiatic language (Lamet, ISO 639: lbn) are also presented for comparison.

“Bihari” Identity in Bangladesh: Unraveling the Diasporic Dynamics

Tanima Sultana — 2025-11-30

The term diaspora is etymologically ambiguous. If on the one hand it is burdened with dispersal, on the other hand it stimulates new possibilities of settlement. People known as diaspora are usually people who have dispersed away from their homeland and, under the tension of not being able to fully assimilate themselves into the existing settlement, attempt to reproduce a new social and cultural formation with a distinct identity tied to their origin or homeland. The Urdu-speaking diaspora living in Bangladesh was born from the dreadful experiences of partition refugees in colonial India like sectarian riots and bloodshed spread in various Indian states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab since 1946. But they are generally referred to as “Bihari.” The “Bihari” diaspora was identified as “Muhajir” prior to 1971, and subsequently as “stranded-Pakistanis,” “stranded non-Bengalis,” “non-Bengalis,” “Biharis,” “non-locals,” “non-vernacular,” etc. As a diaspora, the “Biharis” have been subjected to multiple travails, both through dispersal and re-settlement. The “becoming” and “being” of these people are determined by the ongoing interplay of history, culture, and power. In this context, this anthropological study has been conducted to unveil the nature of the diasporic dynamics surrounding the identity of the “Bihari” community living in Bangladesh, because this is currently underrepresented in studies of “Bihari” individuals. This paper conceptualizes the diasporic identity of this “Bihari” people, traces its diasporic dynamics by exploring the internal sects and diverse social strata of the people, and explores trajectories of inferiority to deny their diasporic identity.

Nuoc 2030: Water as a Carrier of Hope and Despair

Trang Dang — 2025-11-30

This article examines the representation of the changing relationships between coastal communities, multinational corporations, and the sea itself in the first Vietnamese sci-fi film Nuoc 2030 (2014) directed by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo. Set in a near-future Southern Vietnam, where climate change has submerged half of the region under seawater, the film follows a young woman’s quest to uncover the truth behind her husband’s murder.

Drawing on the Blue Humanities and the Anthropocene discourse, this article explores how the coastal communities in the film adapt to, and coexist with, a world inundated by water and marked by biodiversity loss. At the same time, through close textual analysis and examination of Vietnam’s colonial history, it shows how the film highlights the troubling reality of escalating extractive activities of multinational corporations in the country, often masked by the promise of innovative green technologies. Nuoc 2030 weaves together the present and past through flashbacks; its narrative mirrors the chaotic and messy characteristics of water, which carry both the remnants of what has been lost to global warming and the potential offered by the vast unknown of the sea. With its dynamic depiction of time, Nuoc 2030 invites reflections on how human actions—past, present, and future—affect the blue planet and the lives of both humans and nonhumans that inhabit and rely on water.

This article contributes to the expanding field of Blue Humanities through its focus on Southeast Asia. It provides a critical perspective on the cultural and artistic representation of sea level rise particularly in Southern Vietnam and its wider implications for global environmental justice by considering where the film positions itself in terms of hope and responsibility.

The Political Ecology of Adi Ganga: Environmental Governance of an Urban River in Kolkata, India

Pranab Kumar Mandal — 2025-11-30

This article engages with the policies of reviving the Adi Ganga, an urban river in Kolkata and the politics of historical non-implementation of the same at the levels of government and local bodies. In the context of the global neoliberal economic growth of nations, this article highlights that the policies of water governance require a more multispecies-inclusive and local mode of implementation.

The once primary route for urban transportation in Kolkata, the Adi Ganga or the Canal of the Ganges basin, which was the main channel for the Ganges to flow through a long route in the midst of Kolkata and the Sundarbans to fall into the Bay of Bengal, has been in a dilapidated condition over the decades following the development projects and urban expansion in Kolkata. The river has now converted into a sewer and a site for dumping wastes, especially for emptying untreated wastewaters from drains—leading to a highly polluted site responsible for endangering the overall urban ecology of Kolkata.

With references to the policies passed to protect the ecosystem of the Adi Ganga since the colonial times, this article examines the politics of water governance that ignored those implementations—to explore the challenges and gaps between policymaking and policy implementation.

The River as Witness and Wound: Reimagining Riverine Entanglements in Anita Agnihotri’s Mahanadi

Sonalika Chaturvedi — 2025-11-30

This paper examines how Anita Agnihotri’s Mahanadi: The Tale of a River (2021) reconceptualizes riverine agency through the framework of the Blue Humanities. It argues that the novel positions the Mahanadi not as landscape but as a sentient protagonist whose shifting states reflect the complex and often unequal relationships between human and nonhuman worlds. Through its polyphonic form and interlinked stories, the novel highlights the experiences of fisherfolk, weavers, Adivasi healers, and other marginalized communities whose identities and livelihoods are inseparable from the river. Drawing on the histories of displacement caused by the Hirakud Dam, the novel situates water as both cultural archive and witness to ecological and political violence. The paper contends that by foregrounding riverine agency, Mahanadi advances a Global South perspective on watery entanglements and calls for ethical frameworks rooted in indigenous epistemologies. The novel, therefore, serves as a literary archive for rethinking water, culture, and survival in an era of ecological precarity.

Editorial Article

2025-11-30

“Mucky Water, Full of Shapes”: Extinction and Cross-Species Connection in Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker and Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea

Shengyuan Alan Wang — 2025-11-30

Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker (2023) and Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea (2023) share the similar theme of species extinction and cross-species communication. In both novels, the attempt to communicate with an underwater species is met with failure or limitations. The failure of cross-species communication lies in the focus on an animal’s intelligence. Drawing on Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think (2013) and other works on the interplay between the body and the environment, I argue that it is not intelligence, but the physicality of both the animal body and the environment that makes cross-species connection possible. In this paper, I analyze the relation between extinction and cross-species communication in the two novels, and explain the failure and limitations of focusing on animal intelligence when forming connections. Apart from pointing out the failure, by putting emphasis on the bodily characteristics of animals over intellectual capabilities, I argue that the ocean, as a site of shared experiences, is an important factor in forming cross-species connections with marine animals.