TY - JOUR
T1 - Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis
AU - Lambert, James
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - In the late 1930s two British commentators, A.F. Kindersley and R.C. Goffin, published articles on various linguistic features (semantic, grammatical, orthographical, and phonological) of the English language as used in India. These two glossaries offer a valuable insight into late-Raj Indian English. In order to assess the extent of change over the intervening 70-plus years, a comparison of the content of those glossaries to present-day Indian English has been made. The overall picture is one of surprising stability, especially given the strong resistance by educationalists and others who have long stigmatised local variations as 'errors'. This stability over time suggests a long-standing endonormativity that has hitherto not been recognised. Many of the features discussed have even longer stable histories, suggesting an even lengthier endonormativity. This type of diachronic investigation may have similar implications for many other varieties of English.
AB - In the late 1930s two British commentators, A.F. Kindersley and R.C. Goffin, published articles on various linguistic features (semantic, grammatical, orthographical, and phonological) of the English language as used in India. These two glossaries offer a valuable insight into late-Raj Indian English. In order to assess the extent of change over the intervening 70-plus years, a comparison of the content of those glossaries to present-day Indian English has been made. The overall picture is one of surprising stability, especially given the strong resistance by educationalists and others who have long stigmatised local variations as 'errors'. This stability over time suggests a long-standing endonormativity that has hitherto not been recognised. Many of the features discussed have even longer stable histories, suggesting an even lengthier endonormativity. This type of diachronic investigation may have similar implications for many other varieties of English.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893910550&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/weng.12072
DO - 10.1111/weng.12072
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84893910550
VL - 33
SP - 112
EP - 127
JO - World Englishes: journal of English as an international and intranational language
JF - World Englishes: journal of English as an international and intranational language
SN - 0883-2919
IS - 1
ER -