English in South Asia

Epicentral influences of Indian English on Nepali English

“…India plays an extremely important role in South Asia. India is the largest and economically most powerful country in the area, it is in the center of the region, it has a long tradition of extremely popular English‐speaking literature, it harbors the popular Bollywood film industry and many students from neighboring countries come to study at Indian Universities (Lange, 2020, p. 255). It is also the oldest of the South Asian Englishes, it is the ancestor of two other South Asian varieties (namely Bangladesh and Pakistan), and is the largest, as well as the furthest developed second‐language variety in the region (Mukherjee, 2007).…”

“…Mair (2013) even categorizes Indian English as a “(standard) super‐central variety” in his “World System of Standard and Non‐Standard Englishes,” and thus levels it with British, Australian, Nigerian and South African English. Consequently, due to the importance of India in the South Asian Sprachraum , Indian English has also been widely discussed to be the linguistic epicentre for the South Asian region and thus linguistically serving as a model for its neighboring varieties (Bernaisch & Lange, 2012; Gries & Bernaisch, 2016; Heller et al., 2017; Hoffmann et al., 2011; Hundt, Hoffmann, & Mukherjee, 2012; Hundt, 2013; Lange, 2020; Leitner, 1992). Formally, Indian English fulfills Hundt's (2013) requirements for qualifying as an epicentre, that is—in a nutshell—endonormative stabilization, codification, acceptance and being positively evaluated.…”

“…In explaining these parallels, these studies support the role of India as an epicentre of the region, as the features under scrutiny were more frequently found in Indian English than in the neighboring varieties, hinting towards these features emerging in Indian English and spreading out in the neighboring varieties. However, such higher frequencies in Indian English alone can only be considered as a “necessary but not a sufficient condition for stipulating epicentre status” (Lange, 2020, p. 255), because “there is currently no further evidence to support the view that the innovative use of (…) [linguistic features] in IndE [Indian English] predates their use in (…) [other] Asian varieties” (Parviainen & Fuchs, 2019, p. 2). Epicentral research therefore unanimously calls for more diachronic studies.…”

Parameters of epicentral status

“…Equally tentative and reluctantly phrased (but potentially supportive) evidence is provided by Bernaisch and Lange (2012) on the basis of data for focus marking with itself and by Koch and Bernaisch (2013) based on new ditransitives. Lange (2020) also believes that the notion of Indian English as a possible epicentre has ‘intuitive plausibility’ (p. 255). She surveys five structures and finds ‘a possible “trickle‐down effect”’ (that is, higher frequencies in India than in neighboring varieties) but views this as ‘a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for stipulating epicentre status.’ Accordingly, she states the ‘issue [remains] unresolved’ (p. 255).…”

Epicentral influence via agent‐based modelling

“…For India, these were more negative following independence than for the Philippines. However, multilingualism in both countries and tensions between different ethnicities and social groups have led to a strengthening of the role of English (more generally) in India and a backlash against English in the Philippines (compare Lange, 2020 and Wee, 2020). Moreover, shifting epicentral influence assumes that speakers are aware of regionalisms.…”