The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes

Andy Kirkpatrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415470391, 9780415470391
• eBook ISBN: 9781136954559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes constitutes a comprehensive introduction to the study of World Englishes drawing on the expertise of leading authors within the field.

The Handbook is structured in nine sections covering historical perspectives, core issues and topics and new debates which together provide a thorough overview of the field taking into account the new directions in which the discipline is heading.

Among the key themes covered are the development of English as a lingua franca among speakers for whom English is a common but not first language, the parallel development of English as a medium of instruction in educational institutions throughout the world and the role of English as the international language of scholarship and scholarly publishing, as well as the development of 'computer-mediated' Englishes, including 'cyberprose'. The Handbook also includes a substantial introduction and conclusion from the editor.

The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes is the ideal resource for postgraduate students of applied linguistics as well as those in related degrees such as applied English language and TESOL/TEFL.

Section II
Regional varieties and the ‘new’ Englishes

9
The development of the English language in India

Joybrato Mukherjee

Introduction

Over the past 400 years, the English language – once transplanted to the Indian subcontinent as the language of the British colonizers – has developed into an integral part of the linguistic repertoire of India, with the pull towards English growing even stronger in the post-independence period. This process has been marked by the emergence of a distinctly Indian variety of English which fulfils a wide range of communicative functions in present-day India and which is a significant vehicle for Indian identity-construction for a relatively small but substantial and increasing part of the population. In fact, even according to conservative estimates the educated variety of Standard Indian English is used competently and regularly by c. 35 to 50 million Indians today – which makes Indian English the third largest variety of English world-wide in terms of numbers of speakers, outnumbered only by British and American English. The present chapter describes the development of English in India by (a) sketching out the various stages of the diachronic development of English in India from the early seventeenth century to the twenty-first century, (b) systematizing the characteristic features of present-day Indian English from a synchronic perspective, and (c) pointing out some prospects for future research.

Diachronic development: English in India 1600–2010

Describing the formation of Indian English: an evolutionary model

The development of a new variety of English in the Indian context is in many regards a prototypical example of the emergence of what Kachru (1985a) has labelled institutionalized second-language varieties, i.e. varieties of English in postcolonial settings which are based on educated speakers’ use of English as an additional language for a wide range of institutionalized contexts (e.g. in administration, in the education system, in newspapers). In the following, the process of institutionalization will therefore be described along the lines of Schneider’s (2003, 2007) dynamic model of the evolution of postcolonial Englishes – a model that is intended to capture the essentially uniform pattern of variety formation world-wide. The model is, in essence, based on two interrelated factors: (1) changing identity-constructions, and (2) changing interactions between two strands of population, namely the settlers (STL) and the indigenous population (IDG). The fundamental idea that combines the two factors is the following one: the more intense the contact and interaction between the local population and the colonizers becomes, the stronger is the effect on the sociocultural identity-construction of the two groups, which ultimately leads to the establishment of a new hybrid identity manifesting itself in a new variety of English: the IDG and STL ‘“strands” of development … are interwoven like twisted threads’ (Schneider 2003: 242). The two factors are held responsible for a universal evolutionary pattern in the formation of New Englishes consisting of five identifiable (but overlapping) stages (cf. Schneider, this volume):

Phase I – Foundation: In this initial phase, the English language is transported to a new (colonial) territory.

Phase II – Exonormative stabilization: There is a growing number of English settlers/ speakers in the new territory, but the language standards and norms are still determined by the input variety and are, thus, usually oriented towards British English.

Phase III – Nativization: The English language becomes an integral part of the local linguistic repertoire as there is a steady increase in the number of competent bilingual L2 speakers of English from the indigenous population.

Phase IV – Endonormative stabilization: After independence, English may be retained as a/an (co-)official language and a medium of communication for a more or less wide range of intra-national contexts (e.g. administration and the press, academia and education); in this phase a new variety of English emerges with generally accepted local standards and norms.

Phase V – Differentiation: Once a New English variety has become endonormatively stabilized, it may develop a wide range of regional and social dialects.

It has been shown in several applications of the model to the Indian context (cf. Mukherjee 2007; Schneider 2007) that the story of English in India over the past four centuries can indeed be told along the lines of phases I to IV, as will be shown in the following sections.

Foundation phase

The first Englishman to actually use English in India was Father Thomas Stephens, who came to India in 1579. The letters he sent home from Goa can be seen as the first items of ‘Anglo–Indian literature’ (cf. Ward and Waller 1916: 331). In 1600, a Royal Charter was granted to the East India Company, which led to the establishment of trade centres, and to a steadily growing influx of English merchants. They began to interact both with the Moghul emperors of various Indian states and with local Indians for reasons of trade. Besides trade, British missions were set up, their educational facilities attracting Indians who were also taught English in the missionary schools. Later, the British army also attracted many Indian soldiers (with a high proportion of Sikhs, a small religious minority based in Punjab). In the army, too, the English language spread quickly from the STL strand to the IDG strand. In spite of such pockets of early interaction between the two strands, however, for the first 150 years or so, the British colonizers and their descendants certainly continued to feel entirely British, while the local population regarded English as a clearly foreign language. In the mid eighteenth century, it became clear, however, that the British colonial rule would be in place for a longer period of time – and with it, the English language. The use of English in India, thus, became ‘stabilized’, but still ‘exonormatively’, i.e. on grounds of external (British) standards.

Exonormative stabilization

In the eighteenth century, the Moghul Empire in India gradually declined, resulting in a century-long struggle for mastery over India, fought between the British, the French, the Hindu Marathas and the Muslim leaders in the north and south of India. Britain became more and more engaged in the rivalries and conflicts on the subcontinent and established footholds in various coastal areas, especially on the west coast (the Bombay area) and the east coast (in Bengal). The victory of the British forces in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 marks the beginning of the British Empire in India as it established British administrative and political power over the provinces of Bengal and Bihar, the starting point for the colonization of the entire subcontinent over the next decades. The Regulating Act (1773), turning the East India Company into a British administrative body, and the East India Bill (1784), passing the control of the East India Company from the British parliament to Her Majesty’s government, indicated the consolidation of British supremacy over India. One could thus view the second half of the eighteenth century as the beginning of the second phase in the evolution of Indian English, i.e. its exonormative stabilization.

Both the STL strand and the IDG strand were now fully aware that British presence in India was not to be a transient phenomenon and that, accordingly, the language of the new power would stay and become increasingly important: in the early nineteenth century, Britain controlled almost the entirety of India, either by direct rule or by setting up protectorates over Indian vassal states that were ruled by Indian princes. The growth of British power made more and more British people come to India. From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, many more missionaries arrived, spreading the English language among Indians, and many more Indians enrolled in the British-Indian army. Naturally, in this phase a range of local Indian words were absorbed by the English language that referred to items unique to the Indian context (e.g. curry, bamboo, mango, veranda). Despite the influx of Indianisms in the English language in India, the standards and norms of the English language in general – as it was used in the STL strand and taught to the IDG strand – remained British and, thus, exonormatively set.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a relatively small but influential group among Indians became interested in Western and English education, culture and sciences. This was complemented by a growing interest among British linguists, philosophers and scientists in Indian traditions and expertise in their respective fields of research. Against this background, the colonial administration had to decide on what kind of language-educational policy to follow in India: should Indians be taught primarily in their local languages, or should there be an education system with English as the medium of instruction? While the Oriental...

Table of contents

• Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics
• Contents
• Figures
• Maps
• Tables
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Section I Historical perspectives and ‘traditional’ Englishes
• Section II Regional varieties and the ‘new’ Englishes
• Section III Emerging trends and themes
• Section IV Contemporary contexts and functions
• Section V Debates and pedagogical implications
• Section VI The future
• Index