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It's different with you: Contrastive perspectives on address research
Edited by Nicole Baumgarten and Roel Vismans
[Topics in Address Research 5] 2023
► pp. 142–170

Chapter 6
Address forms in academic discourse in Indian English

| Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
| University of Delhi

This chapter explores the impact of culture and identity on discursive practices. It focuses on the use of address forms by Indian bilinguals (speakers of Indian English and Hindi) in a university setting. Our aims are to define the set of address forms used in an academic setting by Indian bilinguals and to find socio-cognitive reasons for their choice in different contexts. The data were collected through open-ended questionnaires supplemented by observations, and interviews. Our results show a strong impact of the cultural background of Indian speakers of English on forms of address and their usage and demonstrate exceptional linguistic creativity of Indian bilinguals in inventing hybrid terms combining English and Hindi. We attempt to explain our findings by using an interdisciplinary approach drawing on contrastive analysis, discourse analysis, politeness theory, translanguaging and cultural studies. Our findings provide evidence of the convergence of English and Hindi which results in Indianisation of English in the Indian context.

Keywords: address forms, identity, bilingual, translanguaging, Indian English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Acculturation and nativisation of English in the Indian context
    • 2.1Linguistic situation in India
    • 2.2Code-switching and code-mixing
    • 2.3Nativisation of English and translanguaging
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Results of the questionnaire
      • 4.1.1Students addressing classmates in class
      • 4.1.2Students addressing a teacher in class
      • 4.1.3Students addressing higher administrative staff
      • 4.1.4Students addressing junior administrative staff
      • 4.1.5Teachers addressing younger colleagues
      • 4.1.6Teachers addressing colleagues of same age
      • 4.1.7Teachers addressing older colleagues
      • 4.1.8Teachers addressing the Head of Department
      • 4.1.9Teachers addressing junior administrative staff
      • 4.1.10Students addressing the Head of Department in writing
      • 4.1.11Teachers addressing the Head of Department in writing
      • 4.1.12Teachers addressing the Vice Chancellor in writing
    • 4.2Results of interviews
      • 4.2.1The use of the English terms madam, ma’am and sir
      • 4.2.2Surname/first name  + sir/ma’am
      • 4.2.3The use of the Hindi kinship forms didi and bhaiya to address junior staff
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.5.06lar
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