Language is important for communicating ideas, but is equally critical as a means of creating and presenting social identity. Postcolonial nations with bilingual populations offer an opportunity to examine how colonially introduced languages are incorporated within modern identities, what long term effects colonialism may have on postcolonial English status, and the social status of these English speakers. Among the nexuses of English appropriation, India stands out worldwide as the largest English speaking nation, with the nativized English variety of India, IE, intertwined with the recent growth of India's economy, increased job outsourcing to India and valorization of Western culture. There are several disturbing trends for English speakers in the postcolonial setting related to the quality and "correctness" of such varieties as compared to "traditional" English dialects. Indians are increasingly "allowed" to be considered native English speakers; however, their dialectal features, often termed "Indianisms," continue to be viewed as "wrong" or "needing fixing," denigrating IE as an incorrect, non-standard code. This conflict raises important theoretical questions central to socio-cultural and linguistic theory about the relationship between language change and changes in how people understand and use languages in the local setting. This project thus explores how globalization is affecting IE: urban 21st century India is rife with outsourcing, flooded with western media, and has a blossoming middle class.
Within this context, IE, as a case study, illuminates how globalization interacts with IE, both structurally and socially. This research documents and theorizes changes in the post-colonial setting, by focusing on IE speakers as social agents who, through their language practices and beliefs, support and challenge local and external social ideologies to create a local, nativized modern English identity. Under the direction of Dr. Janet Shibamoto Smith, Vineeta Chand will address these relationships through interviews with four generations of IE speakers in New Delhi, India in order to understand how people feel about and where they use IE, life goals, and language plans, and how these link to both the development of IE as a distinct English variety with unique properties, and the development of a modern, local IE identity.
