Corpus linguistics and New Englishes
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Chandrika Balasubramanian
Abstract
The rising status of English as a world language has resulted in the emergence of new varieties of English that have been legitimized by such expressions as New Englishes and New Varieties of English. Accepting the idea of New Englishes has allowed much-needed movement away from the previously accepted notions of nativeness and non-nativeness (Mesthrie 2010), and today, they are seen as systems unto themselves as opposed to deviant forms of traditional native varieties (Jenkins 2003). The current study investigates spoken and written registers of contemporary Indian English and demonstrates, through the investigation of WH-questions, and the circumstance adverbials also and only that Indian English shows the same kind of internal variation present in more traditional “native” varieties. Keywords: Indian English; register; circumstance adverbials; wh-questions
Abstract
The rising status of English as a world language has resulted in the emergence of new varieties of English that have been legitimized by such expressions as New Englishes and New Varieties of English. Accepting the idea of New Englishes has allowed much-needed movement away from the previously accepted notions of nativeness and non-nativeness (Mesthrie 2010), and today, they are seen as systems unto themselves as opposed to deviant forms of traditional native varieties (Jenkins 2003). The current study investigates spoken and written registers of contemporary Indian English and demonstrates, through the investigation of WH-questions, and the circumstance adverbials also and only that Indian English shows the same kind of internal variation present in more traditional “native” varieties. Keywords: Indian English; register; circumstance adverbials; wh-questions
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
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Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
-
Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
