Part of
Grammatical Change in English World-WideEdited by Peter Collins
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 67] 2015
► pp. 411–436
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
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
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.
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan & Sand, Lori
1991 The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3: 241–264. 
Basso, Keith H
1967 Semantic aspects of linguistic acculturation. American Anthropologist 69(5): 471–477.
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.
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.
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward
(eds) 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
Bright, William
(ed) 1992 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 1. Oxford: OUP.
Davies, Mark
2008– The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 Million Words, 1990-Present. [URL] (3 December 2013).
2010– The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 Million Words, 1810-2009. [URL] (3 December 2013).
Firth, John R
1935 The technique of semantics. Transactions of the Philological Society 34(1): 36–72.
Giles, Howard
1984 The Dynamics of Speech Accommodation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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.
Holt, John Clifford
(ed.) 2011 The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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.
Johnson, Jean Bassett
1943 A clear case of linguistic acculturation. American Anthropologist 45(3): 427–434.
Kachru, Braj B
1985 Institutionalised second-language varieties. In The English Language Today, Sidney Greenbaum (ed), 211–226. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
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.
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.
Lyons, John
1968 Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Mesthrie, Rajend & Bhatt, Rakesh M
2008 World Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties. Cambridge: CUP.
Meyler, Michael
2007 A Dictionary of Sri Lankan English. Colombo: Mirisgala.
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.
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.
2009 Anglistische Korpuslinguistik: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.
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.
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. [URL] (23 September 2013).
Rayson, Paul
2008 From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13(4): 519–549.
Rocci, Andrea & Wariss Monteiro, Márcio
2009 Cultural keywords in arguments: The case of interactivity. Cogency 1(2): 65–100.
Schilk, Marco
2012 Structural Nativization in Indian English Lexicogrammar [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 46]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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.
Schneider, Edgar W
2003 The dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language 79(2): 233–281.
2007 Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: CUP.
Scott, Mike
2008 WordSmith Tools. Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.
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.
1995 Collocations and cultural connotations of common words. Linguistics and Education 7(4): 379–390.
1996 Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
2002 Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thomason, Sarah G
2001 Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Trudgill, Peter
1986 Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wierzbicka, Anna
1997 Understanding Cultures Through their Keywords. Oxford: OUP.
Williams, Raymond
1976 Keywords. London: Fontana.
Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
Ahrens, Kathleen
2023. Contesting territory via editorials in different varieties of English. World Englishes 42:2 ► pp. 186 ff. 
Collins, Peter
2021. Cultural keywords in World Englishes: A GloWbE-based study. ICAME Journal 45:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Collins, Peter Craig
2022. Comment markers in world Englishes. World Englishes 41:2 ► pp. 244 ff.
Fuchs, Robert
2020. The progressive in 19th and 20th century settler and indigenous Indian English. World Englishes 39:3 ► pp. 394 ff.
Mukherjee, Joybrato & Tobias Bernaisch
2020. Corpus Linguistics and Asian Englishes. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 741 ff.
Schneider, Edgar W.
2018. The interface between cultures and corpora: Tracing reflections and manifestations. ICAME Journal 42:1 ► pp. 97 ff.
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.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. 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.