Uniformity and Variability in the Indian English Accent

Abstract

The sounds of Indian English are distinct and recognizable to outsiders, while insiders perceive variations in how English has developed in this large diverse population. What characteristics mark the unity? Which are clues to a speaker's origins or identity? This Element synthesizes research over the past fifty years and adds to it, focusing on selected features of consonants, vowels, and suprasegmentals (stress, intonation, rhythm) to understand the characteristics of Indian English accents and sources of its uniformity and variability. These accent features, perceptible by humans and discoverable by computational approaches, may be used in expressing identity, both local and pan-Indian.

Attitudes towards Indian English among young urban professionals in Hyderabad, India

“…However, consistent with recent literature on Indian English (Gargesh, 2004;Maxwell & Payne, in print;Payne & Maxwell, 2019;Sailaja, 2009Sailaja, , 2012Wiltshire, 2020), our results show strong awareness of variation within Indian English and of the complexity in describing this variation. This emerged in a response from IE30, who demonstrated a degree of uncertainty about the term 'Indian English':…”

“…In sum, we acknowledge that the term 'Indian English' is not a monolithic entity: it is used as a shorthand in order to align with previous empirical work on this variety. There is an ongoing debate whether we are dealing with a single pan-Indian variety or multiple subvarieties (Gargesh, 2004;Maxwell, 2014;Maxwell & Payne, in print;Mukherjee, 2007;Sailaja, 2012;Wiltshire, 2020).…”

“…We acknowledge that the use of these terms may have inadvertently drawn attention to the role of L1 and L1 influence, but we consider these terms to be important in order to conceptualise what Indian English is and they were in broad usage in Hyderabad at the time of data collection. These L1-based terms date back to the 1960s, referring often to geographical variation as well as L1 variation (Wiltshire, 2020), and form part of the broader discourse on Indian English that circulates among its speakers.…”

“…We examine their attitudes towards the English they speak, Indian English more broadly, and other mainstream/Inner Circle Englishes, along with their views on norms, standardness and accent variability. According to Wiltshire (2020), studying this population is of extreme importance. This socio‐demographic group is a good representation of speakers of a more acrolectal variety/ies of Indian English, given the majority of Indian English speakers are urban, less likely to have spent time overseas, started learning English in early childhood, and have had exposure to ‘more contemporaneous pedagogical approaches […] involving teachers and linguistic models from within India’ (Wiltshire, 2020, p. 12).…”

Attitudes Toward Saudi English: Decentering the Inner-Circle

“…The recording was excerpted from an interview conducted by the Indian speaker, Sidhant Sibal, who is a middle-aged news reporter, working for a major Indian news channel called ‘World is One’ (WION). His speech contained features that have been documented in other studies of IE, particularly at the phonological level (Sailaja, 2012 ; Wiltshire, 2020 ) such as replacing dentals like /θ/ with dental plosives ⁄ t̪ ⁄. The Saudi speaker, Nouf Marwaai, is a middle-aged woman in her 40 s, and she is a yoga instructor.…”