Article published in:
Grammatical Change in English World-Wide
Edited by Peter Collins
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 67] 2015
► pp. 411–436

Cultural keywords in context

A pilot study of linguistic acculturation in South Asian Englishes

| Justus Liebig University Giessen
| Justus Liebig University Giessen

The present study focuses on lexicogrammatical routines of South Asian Englishes that are associated with so-called ‘cultural keywords’. These routines are particularly significant manifestations of the overarching process of the linguistic acculturation of the English language in new postcolonial settings. Specifically, we make use of the South Asian Varieties of English Corpus in order to compare acrolectal Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan English with regard to typical noun-verb collocations linked to three cultural keywords shared by all three South Asian Englishes: government, terror and religion. This pilot study offers a way of describing the effects of diachronic divergence in the formation of South Asian Englishes although comparable historical corpora of English in South Asia are not (yet) available. Keywords: cultural keywords; South Asian Englishes; collocations; divergence; lexicogrammar

Published online: 24 February 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.67.17muk
References
Achebe, Chinua
1975/1993. The African writer and the English language. In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, Patrick Williams & Laura Chrisman (eds), 428–434. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan & Sand, Lori
1991 The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3: 241–264. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Basso, Keith H
1967 Semantic aspects of linguistic acculturation. American Anthropologist 69(5): 471–477. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beardsley, Monroe C
1975 Figurative language. In Introductory Readings on Language, Wallace L. Anderson & Norman C. Stageberg (eds), 148–157. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Bernaisch, Tobias, Koch, Christopher, Mukherjee, Joybrato & Schilk, Marco
2011 Manual for the South Asian Varieties of English (SAVE) Corpus: Compilation, Cleanup Process, and Details on the Individual Components. Giessen: Justus Liebig University.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward
(eds) 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Bright, William
(ed) 1992 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 1. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Davies, Mark
2008– The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 Million Words, 1990-Present. http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coca/ (3 December 2013).
2010– The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 Million Words, 1810-2009. http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coha/ (3 December 2013).
Firth, John R
1935 The technique of semantics. Transactions of the Philological Society 34(1): 36–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard
1984 The Dynamics of Speech Accommodation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Sebastian & Mukherjee, Joybrato
2007 Ditransitive verbs in Indian English and British English: A corpus-linguistic study. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 32: 5–24.Google Scholar
Holt, John Clifford
(ed.) 2011 The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Gut, Ulrike
(eds) 2012 Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide: Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes [Varieties of English around the World G43]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Jean Bassett
1943 A clear case of linguistic acculturation. American Anthropologist 45(3): 427–434. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kachru, Braj B
1985 Institutionalised second-language varieties. In The English Language Today, Sidney Greenbaum (ed), 211–226. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Laporte, Robert
2002 Pakistan – political system. In Encyclopdia of Modern Asia – 4. Malaysia to Portuguese in Southeast Asia, David Levinson & Karen Christensen (eds), 436–440. New York, NY: Scribner.Google Scholar
Louw, William E
1993 Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds), 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, John
1968 Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mesthrie, Rajend & Bhatt, Rakesh M
2008 World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Meyler, Michael
2007 A Dictionary of Sri Lankan English. Colombo: Mirisgala.Google Scholar
Mishra, Patit Paban
2002 India – profile. In Encyclopedia of Modern Asia – 3. Iaido to Malay-Indonesian Language, David Levinson & Karen Christensen (eds), 9–13. New York, NY: Scribner.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato
2007 Structural nativisation in Indian English: Exploring the lexis-grammar interface. In Rainbow of Linguistics: Volume I, Niladri Sekhar Dash, Probal Dasgupta & Pabitra Sarkar (eds), 98–116. Calcutta: T. Media Publication.Google Scholar
2009 Anglistische Korpuslinguistik: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato & Schilk, Marco
2012 Exploring variation and change in New Englishes: Looking into the International Corpus of English (ICE) and beyond. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds), 189–199. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Natarajan, Swaminathan
2012 Media freedom in post war Sri Lanka and its impact on the reconciliation process. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Fellowship Papers. https://​reutersinstitute​.politics​.ox​.ac​.uk​/fileadmin​/documents​/Publications​/fellows​__papers​/20112012​/Media%20Freedom%20in%20Post%20War%20Sri%20Lanka​.pdf (23 September 2013).Google Scholar
Rayson, Paul
2008 From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13(4): 519–549. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rocci, Andrea & Wariss Monteiro, Márcio
2009 Cultural keywords in arguments: The case of interactivity. Cogency 1(2): 65–100.Google Scholar
Schilk, Marco
2012 Structural Nativization in Indian English Lexicogrammar [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 46]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schilk, Marco, Bernaisch, Tobias & Mukherjee, Joybrato
2012 Mapping unity and diversity in South Asian English lexicogrammar: Verb-complementational preferences across varieties. In Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide: Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes [Varieties of English around the World G43], Marianne Hundt & Ulrike Gut (eds), 137–165. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W
2003 The dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language 79(2): 233–281. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Mike
2008 WordSmith Tools. Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael
1993 British traditions in text analysis: From Firth to Sinclair. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini Bonelli (eds), 1–33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1995 Collocations and cultural connotations of common words. Linguistics and Education 7(4): 379–390. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1996 Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2002 Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G
2001 Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
1986 Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1997 Understanding Cultures Through their Keywords. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond
1976 Keywords. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 8 other publications

No author info given
2021.  In Corpora, Constructions, New Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 100], Crossref logo
Ahrens, Kathleen
2021. Contesting territory via editorials in different varieties of English. World Englishes Crossref logo
Collins, Peter
2021. Cultural keywords in World Englishes: A GloWbE-based study. ICAME Journal 45:1 ► pp. 5 ff. Crossref logo
Collins, Peter Craig
2022. Comment markers in world Englishes. World Englishes 41:2 ► pp. 244 ff. Crossref logo
Fuchs, Robert
2020. The progressive in 19th and 20th century settler and indigenous Indian English. World Englishes 39:3 ► pp. 394 ff. Crossref logo
Mukherjee, Joybrato & Tobias Bernaisch
2020.  In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 741 ff. Crossref logo
Schneider, Edgar W.
2018. The interface between cultures and corpora: Tracing reflections and manifestations. ICAME Journal 42:1 ► pp. 97 ff. Crossref logo
Smith, Adam & Minna Korhonen
2022. Parliamentary Hansard records and epicentral influence in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. World Englishes 41:3 ► pp. 475 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 september 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.