Script Choice in a Community Poster
Students design a poster for a Tamil cultural festival at a community hall. The committee asks for the poster to be 'in Tamil', but the audience includes second-generation teenagers who speak Tamil at home and read it slowly, and older community members who read Tamil fluently. One student proposes an all-Tamil poster in formal written Tamil. Another proposes Tamil in Roman script (transliteration) so teenagers can read it quickly. A third suggests English only, arguing 'everyone reads English'. The teacher asks the group to justify a final design rather than vote.
1. Evaluate the three proposals against the audience and the purpose of the poster.
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Each proposal optimises for one part of the audience and neglects the rest.
- All-Tamil in formal written Tamil serves fluent older readers and affirms the language's status, but it excludes the teenagers who read Tamil slowly, and formal written Tamil on a poster can read as stiff for a festival.
- Roman transliteration gives teenagers fast access, but it sidelines the Tamil script, can look to older readers like the language is being demoted, and produces inconsistent spellings that slow recognition rather than speed it.
- English only serves nobody's Tamil identity and contradicts the committee's brief; 'everyone reads English' is an assumption about the audience, not a finding.
The purpose is a festival poster: it must inform quickly and signal that Tamil is alive in the community. No single-script option does both for this audience.
2. Recommend a design and justify the script and register choices with reference to cultural and intercultural understanding.
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A defensible design is Tamil script as the primary text, with short English or Roman-script support for key details (time, venue, contact), and a less formal register than a formal notice.
Justification:
- Status and access together. Tamil script carries the cultural claim the committee asked for; the supporting line gives slow readers a foothold without replacing the script. This is additive bilingual design, not substitution.
- Register fit. A festival is a community event, so a slightly conversational Tamil (rather than heavy formal written Tamil) lowers the reading burden and matches the occasion, while still being respectful.
- Intercultural reasoning. The poster mediates between generations: it does not treat the teenagers' slower reading as a reason to abandon the script, nor treat the older readers as the only legitimate audience. It also avoids the assumption that English is neutral ground.
The judgement tested is that script choice is an identity decision as well as a communication decision, and the answer must serve both without sacrificing either.