What is it about?
This article compares two glossaries of Indian English from the 1930s against Indian English of the 21st century. The results show a 68% retention rate which suggests a high level of stability in the variety. This stability of a more than 70-year period is all the more significant given that it occurred in spite of the strong stigmatisation of local variations as ‘errors’, especially by educationalists and self-appointed language guardians, whose point of view is still widely promulgated today. Significantly,
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Why is it important?
The dichotomy of endonormativity / exonormativity is of great salience in such fields as World Englishes, language politics, critical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. However, generally, statements about endo-/exonormativity are impressionistic rather than being based on the outcome of empirical research. The diachronic investigation conducted in this paper suggests a method for determining the stability of language features over time. The provision of similar assessments is a considerable desideratum.
Perspectives
Although the results of this study argue for a greater endonormativity in Indian English than has been recognised before, there is still much work to be done to more accurately gauge this diachronic stability and to construct a history of Indian English which is comparable to the historical accounts of other major varieties of English.
Dr James Lambert
National Institute of Education
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This page is a summary of: Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis, World Englishes, February 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/weng.12072.
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