Indian English

Somdev Kar, Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India INTRODUCTION This book treats linguistic and socio-cultural aspects of English as it is used in India. It is an important contribution to the Edinburgh University Press series 'Dialects of English', which documents varieties of English worldwide. In India's multilingual setting, English plays a significant role in communication, literature, business and elsewhere. Though English first came to India with the British, in the last four hundred years it has become an indispensable part of Indian society. This volume contextualizes research on Indian English by using a good selection of sample texts, from conversational to literary. The book is organized into seven interesting, well-illustrated chapters, discussing phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, lexis, discourse and other issues related to English used in India. It also contains a survey of previous research and an annotated bibliography on Indian English. SUMMARY The first chapter introduces the topic, outlines the status of English in this pluralistic nation, and provides a comparison to British and American varieties. The chapter starts with the description of Indian geography and demographics, and India's cultural setting with its many languages and strong regional differences. English, as an official language of the Union of India, bridges the diverse nation and also plays vital roles in government, business and education beyond communication in general. But scholars are always divided on whether it is 'Indian English' or 'English in India'. The debate goes on, but 'Indian English' is taken in this work. Chapter 2, "Phonetics and Phonology", describes the accent, intonation, rhythm, suprasegmental features of Indian English. Some specific vowels and consonants are discussed in this chapter, along with rhotic usage. Particularly those common features of Indian English are contrasted phonetically with Received Pronunciation. The influence of native languages on the English is also illustrated. Chapter 3 discusses morphosyntax, including verbs, articles, prepositions, idioms and inflectional forms. One of the most striking features of Indian English is the tag question "isn't it". This is treated here along with other question formation processes such as wh-questions and yes-no questions. Some typical morphosyntactic operations in different varieties of Indian English include reduplication ('little-little', 'small-small'), reduced phrases ('three-four books' instead of 'three or four books') are richly illustrated. A small section on code switching is presented, setting up a larger discussion in a later chapter. This chapter also raises the question of the basis of English used in India, where one can find both American and British English inflectional forms in use. In chapter 4, the author contrasts the lexis of Indian, American and British English and of their tendency to borrow words from each other -- mainly to Indian English from the latter two. An interesting section is given on compounding ("black money", "outstation cheque"), affixation ("Naxalite", "filmi"), abbreviation ("NRI" for Non-Resident Indian, "BSNL" for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited), hybrid constructions ("lathi charge", "iftaar party"), redundancy ("tissue paper", "return back") and so on. Discourse features such as linkers, address forms and politeness strategies by Indians using English are discussed with examples from literature and other sources. Some typical styles used in Indian English in both written and spoken form are also listed here (e.g. "Respected sir", "Yours most obediently"). They are not generally used by native speakers of either British or American English. The chapter includes a more detailed discu

Pingali Sailaja is Professor, Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India.

1. Introduction; 2. Phonetics and Phonology; 3. Morphosyntax; 4. Lexis and Discourse; 5. History, and Changes in Progress; 6. Survey of Previous Work and Annotated Bibliography; 7. Sample Texts.