Cover not available
Article published In:
Language of Empire, Language of Power
Edited by Kees Versteegh
[Language Ecology 2:1/2] 2018
► pp. 18–40

Mapping the spread of the English language in India

A linguistic ecology approach

| University of Tuscia,
This article aims to offer, within an intra- and interdisciplinary approach, a further analysis of the formal and informal contexts in which the English language was used in India during the British colonisation, highlighting the favourable conditions these contexts created for the formation of pidginised varieties of English, such as Butler Pidgin English or Boxwāllā(h) Pidgin English (Kachru 1994). Substantial elements of a wider picture of social, cultural, political and commercial contact have been taken into account along with the analysis of old written sources. Indeed, both official records of the East Indian Company (e.g. dispatches about political strategies and language policy) and merchants’ correspondence have been studied in order to understand how we can say something about oral communication through written sources (Rambø 2013).
Keywords: historical sociolinguistics, language ecology, language contact, Portuguese, Indiginised Varieties of English, Pidgin English, interactional sociolinguistics, social anthropology, accommodation theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mapping the English language in education: East Indian Company language policy
  • 3.Political, commercial and private life relations
    • 3.1“…being myself ignorant of the Persian”: Bentinck’s appeal to Indian Princes
    • 3.2The trade networks
    • 3.3Private life
  • 4.Dynamics for the formation of English based contact languages in India
    • 4.1Internal ecology: English varieties in use among EIC merchants
    • 4.2Interpretative sociolinguistics of external language factors
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.18004.mur
References (78)
Sources
British library, London, UK
Asian and African Manuscripts, India Office Record
Mss Eur E 424/1, Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck papers
IOR/E/3/94, Surat, December 30, 1699, general letter, p. 133
IOR/H/487, extract of public letter to Bengal, June 17, 1800, ff. 185r–191v
IOR/H/488, letter from Webbe J. [sic] to Edmonstone, June 19, 1802
IOR/H/632, translation of a firman by Paypas Braminey Linguist, pp. 24–26
IOR/H/723, letter to Board of Control, October 5, 1836
National archive, London, UK
Correspondence from Indian brokers
C 104/248, Part I–II, merchants’ correspondence in English and Portuguese language
References
Annamalai, Elay. 2001. The colonial language in multilingualism and the process of modernization. In E. Annamalai, ed. Managing Multilingualism in India: Political and Linguistic Manifestation. Language and Development Series, Vol. 81, New Delhi: SAGE. 89–124.Google Scholar
. 2004. Medium of power: The question of English in education in India. In James W. Tollefson and Amy B. M. Tsui, eds. Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? London: L. Erlbaum, Mahwah, N.J. 177–194.Google Scholar
. 2010. Politics of language in India. In P. Brass, ed. Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics. New York: Routledge. 213–231.Google Scholar
Ansaldo, Umberto. 2009. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Appel, René and Pieter Muysken. 1987 [2005]. Language Contact and Bilingualism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Bakshi, Varoon. 2017. The emergence and growth of colonial language policy and its clash with the linguistic agenda of the national movement. In M. Sridhar and Sunita Mishra, eds. Language Policy and Education in India: Documents, Contexts and Debates. New York: Routledge. 26–40.Google Scholar
Baumgardner, Robert J. 1996. South Asian English: Structure, Use and User. Urbana and Chicago: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bhatt, R. M. 2004. Indian English: Syntax. In Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider, in collaboration with Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie and Clive Upton, eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1016–1030.Google Scholar
Behram, Boman B. K. 1971. The introduction of English among Indian princes. Indica 8(2): 69–89.Google Scholar
Bowen, H. V., Elizabeth Mancke and John G. Reid, eds. 2012. Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardoso, Hugo. 2014. Factoring sociolinguistic variation into the history of Indo-Portuguese, Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 51: 87–115.Google Scholar
. 2016. O português em contacto na Ásia e no Pacífico. In A. Martins, and E. Carrilho, eds. Manual de linguística portuguesa. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. 68–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chaudhary, Shreesh. 2009. Foreigners and Foreign Languages in India: A Sociolinguistic History. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press and Foundation Books. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. First textbooks in English India. In M. Sridhar and Sunita Mishra, eds. Language Policy and Education in India: Documents, Contexts and Debates. New York: Routledge. 147–165.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Kirti Narayan. 1992. The Portuguese maritime empire, trade, and society in the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century. Special Issue supported by the Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses. Portuguese Studies 81: 57–70.Google Scholar
Davies, Timothy. 2012. British private trade networks in the Arabian Seas, c. 1680 – c. 1760. PhD dissertation. University of Warwick. Available online at [URL]. Accessed 19 May 2017.
. 2015. Trading letters in the Arabian Seas: The correspondence networks of British merchants in eighteenth-century western India. Genre 48(2): 215–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eliasson, Stig. 2013. Language ecology in the work of Einar Haugen. In Wim Vandenbussche, Ernst Håkon Jahr and Peter Trudgill, eds. Language Ecology for the 21st Century: Linguistic Conflicts and Social Environment. Oslo: Novus Press. 15–63.Google Scholar
Evans, Stephen. 2002. Macaulay’s Minute revisited: Colonial language policy in nineteenth-century India. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23(4): 260–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard and P. Smith. 1979. Accommodation theory: Optimal levels of convergence. In Howard Giles and Robert N. St. Clair, eds. Language and Social Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. 45–65.Google Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. 1999. Regional and social variation. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. III1. 1476 to 1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 459–538.Google Scholar
Gupta, Brijen K. 1962. Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–1757: Background to the Foundation of British Power in India. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1972. The ecology of language. In Einar Haugen. The Ecology of Language: Essays by Einar Haugen. Selected and introduced by A. Dil. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 325–339.Google Scholar
Henriksen, Carol. 1984. The ecology of language and the history of language: The case of the Danish standard. In K. Ringgaard and V. Sørensen (eds.). The Nordic Languages and Odern Linguistics 5. Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference of Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics in Århus 27/6–1/7 1983. Aarhus: Nordisk Institut, Århus Universitet. 253–260.Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond. 2004a. Dialects of English and their transportation. In Raymond Hickey, ed. Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 33–120.Google Scholar
. 2004b. English in Asia and Africa: Origin and structure. In Raymond Hickey, ed. Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 503–535.Google Scholar
. 2004c. South Asian Englishes. In Raymond Hickey, ed. Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 536–558.Google Scholar
. 2010. Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hosali, Priya. 1987. Nuances of English in India. What the Butler Really Said. Centre for Communication Studies, Indus Education Foundation.Google Scholar
. 2000. Butler English: Form and Function. New Delhi: B. R. Paperback.Google Scholar
Hosali, Priya and Jean Aitchinson. 1986. Butler English: A minimal pidgin? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1(11): 51–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kachru, Braj B. 1983. The Indianization of English: The English Language in India. Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
1986. The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of Non-Native Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
1994. English in South Asia. In Robert Burchfield, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. V. English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 497–553.Google Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson. 2006. Asian English Today: World Englishes in Asian contexts. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
King, Christopher R. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Krishnamurti, Bh. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krishnaswamy, N. and S. Archana Burde. 1998. The Politics of Indians’ English: Linguistic Colonialism and the Expanding English Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Krishnaswamy, N. and Lalita Krishnaswamy. 2006. The Story of English in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press under the imprint of Foundation Books. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1999a. Introduction. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. III1. 1476 to 1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1–12.Google Scholar
. 1999b. Phonology and morphology. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. III1. 1476 to 1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 56–186.Google Scholar
Law, Narendra Nath. 1915. Promotion of Learning in India by Early European Settlers (up to about 1800 A.D.). Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: Longmans, Green and Co.Google Scholar
Lupyan, Gary and Rick Dale. 2010. Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLOS 5(1): 8559.Google Scholar
Marshall, P. J. 1987: Private British trade in the Indian Ocean. In Ashin Das Gupta and Michael N. Pearson, eds. India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800. Calcutta: Oxford University Press. 276–300.Google Scholar
Masica Colin, P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Raja Ram. 1998. Indian English: Text and Interpretation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mhamai, S. K. 2004. Mhamais of Goa in the Network of Trade and Culture. Panaji: Fundação do Oriente.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge, New York, and Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mukherjee, Alok. 2017. Early English textbooks and language policies in India. In M. Sridhar and Sunita Mishra, eds. Language Policy and Education in India: Documents, Contexts and Debates. New York: Routledge. 9–25.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato. 2010. The development of the English language in India. In Andy Kirkpatrick, ed. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. Oxon and New York: Routledge. 167–180.Google Scholar
Muru, Cristina. 2009. Una varietà di angloindiano: Il Butler English in India. In Barbara Turchetta, ed. Pidgin e Creoli: Introduzione alle lingue di contatto. Rome: Carocci. 105–140.Google Scholar
. 2016. La variazione linguistica nelle pratiche scrittorie dei Dragomanni. In Margherita Di Salvo and Cristina Muru, eds. Dragomanni, sovrani e mercanti: Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo moderno. Pisa: ETS. 147–202.Google Scholar
. 2017. Patterns of cultural mobility: The contribution of Portuguese missionaries in South India. Paper presented at The Companion Language of the Empire? Formal and Informal Spaces of the Portuguese Language (16th–20th centuries) conference. University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy. 2 Feb 2017, available online at [URL].
, in preparation. English in India: Interferences and Acquisitional Markers in the Outcomes of Linguistic Contacts during British Dominion (16th–18th century).
Nihalani, Paroo, R. K. Tongue and Priya Hosali. 1970. Indian and British English: A Handbook of Usage and Pronunciation. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nurullah, Syed and J. P. Naik. 1951. History of Education in India (during the British period). Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and London: MacMillan and Co.Google Scholar
. 1964. A Students’ History of Education in India (1800–1965). Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and London: MacMillan and Co.Google Scholar
Paxman, Jeremy. 2012. Empire: What Ruling the World did to the British. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pearson, Michael N. 2003. The Indian Ocean. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
, ed. 2015. Trade, Circulation, and Flow in the Indian Ocean World. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Penny, Frank. 1904. The Church in Madras, being the History of the Ecclesiastical and Missionary Action of the East India Company in the Residency of Madras in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Smith Elder and Co.Google Scholar
Rambø, Gro-Renée. 2013. Historical language sociology – or rather language ecology? In Wim Vandenbussche, Ernst Håkon Jahr and Peter Trudgill, eds. Language Ecology for the 21st Century: Linguistic Conflicts and Social Environment. Oslo: Novus Press. 165–188.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Syntax. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. III1. 1476 to 1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 187–331.Google Scholar
Salmon, Vivian. 1999. Orthography and punctuation. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. III1. 1476 to 1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13–55.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schouten, Maria Johanna (2010). Malay and Portuguese as Contact Langauges in the Southeast Asian Arcipelago, 16th-18th Centuries. In Mark Häberlein and Keese Alexander, eds. Sprachgrenzen, Sprachkontakte, Kulturelle Vermittler: Kommunikation zwischen Europäern und Aussereuropäern (16.-20. Jahrhundert), Stuttgart: Steiner. 345–354.Google Scholar
Smith, Ian. 2016. The Earliest Grammars of Sri Lanka Portuguese. As primeiras gramáticas do português do Sri Lanka. PA PIA Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e similares 26(2): 237–281.Google Scholar
Spitzbardt, Harry. 1976. English in India. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Sridhar, M. and Mishra, Sunita (eds). 2017. Language Policy and Education in India. Documents, contexts and debates. London: Routledge India.Google Scholar
Subramanian, Lakshmi. 1987. Banias and the British: The role of indigenous credit in the process of imperial expansion in western India in the second half of the eighteenth century. Modern Asian Studies 21(3): 473–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Three Merchants of Bombay: Business Pioneers of the Nineteenth Century, with an introduction by Gurcharan Das. Haryana: Portfolio by Penguin Group.Google Scholar
Tomás, Maria Isabel. 2009. The role of women in the cross-pollination process in the Asian-Portuguese varieties. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 8(2): 49–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trivellato, F. 2000. From Livorno to Goa and back: Merchant network and the coral-diamond trade in the early-eighteenth century. Portuguese Studies 161: 193–217.Google Scholar
Tulsi, Ram. 1983. Trading in Language: The Story of English in India. Delhi: GDK.Google Scholar
Visram, Rozina. 2002. Asian in Britain: 400 Years of History. London: Sterling Va. Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Bruce. 1987. Indian merchants and English private interests: 1659–1760. In Ashin Das Gupta and Michael N. Pearson, eds. India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 301–316.Google Scholar
Wheeler, J. Talboys. 1877. Early Records of British India: A history of the English settlements in India as told in the government records, the work of old travellers, and other contemporary documents from the earliest period to the rise of British power in India. New Delhi and Madras: Asian Educational Service.Google Scholar
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell. 1968 [1886]. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms. New York: Humanities Press [London: J. Murray].Google Scholar