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Like Sinha, Sulekha makes a linguistic distinction between newly joined hijras, referring to them throughout the passage in the mas-culine singular, and the morę experienced hijra yeterans, identifying them as feminine. This distinction becomes particularly elear when she reports the initiate’s surprise at discovering that the older community members behave somewhat differently, and illu-minates this disparity by referring to the initiate in the masculine but to his superiors in the feminine: ‘She sits* like this, so he’ll sit^m in the same way. She eats^f like this, so he’ll eat^m in the same way.’ Central to the hijras’ discussions of feminine-language acquisi-tion is the notion of adat, or ‘habit’. The hijras’ repeated use of this term invites an interesting extension of Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus, sińce speakers develop strategies for expression at an accelerated pace in this alternatively defined linguistic marketplace. The use of feminine speech in the hijra community is in many ways synonymous with the projection of a non-masculine identity, and there is a high value placed on its production. Through an intensive immersion in what Bourdieu would cali ‘positive and negative rein-forcements’ (1977: 654), the hijras ąuickly ‘acąuire durable dispositions’ towards those behayiours deemed appropriate by community members, building them into their own linguistic reper-toire. In the following excerpt, Sulekha explains how initiates are reprimanded for the use of masculine speech, physically as well as yerbally: