Chapter 6. Address forms in academic discourse in Indian English

Abstract

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.