Varieties of English Around the World (vols. G1–55, T1–9,1979–2015)
/content/collections/jbe-2015-veaw
Varieties of English Around the World (vols. G1–55, T1–9,1979–2015)
OK
Cancel
Collection Contents
-
-
Indian English
More LessIndian English, or rather, the forms of English used in India, have long been a topic of interest for laymen and scholars. For generations, the ‘exotic’ nature of the transplanted language was commented on, often ridiculed as a matter of unintentional comic. It was only from the 1960s onwards that the local forms of English were recognized for what they are — adaptations of the world language to local needs, and varying to an enormous degree, depending on the speakers’ (and writers’) education and the uses they make of the language. This acknowledgement came mainly from abroad (and still does); Indians are much less willing to admit to the variation and its communicative functions in the country. Therefore, standard English (if possible in its classical British form) is generally favoured, together with formal written uses often based on the stylistic models provided by English literature from Shakespeare to Dickens.
R.R. Mehrotra was one of the first to see the need for a proper sociolinguistic description of the Indian situation, and the forms and functions of English in this complex set-up. He has for a long time collected and analysed the huge range of English around him, with the aim of publishing a collection of texts that reflects the variation within the country along various dimensions, historical, regional, ethnic, social and stylistic.
The present collection of texts is typical in many ways, evoking in the content, style and grammatical forms the contexts in which English functions; notes help to put the excerpts into the proper frame to make them intelligible to outsiders.
-
-
-
An Index to Dialect Maps of Great Britain
More LessThe results of the dialect surveys of Great Britain have been published in the form of hundreds of single and collected maps, but so far there has been no actual handbook to the charted material. The Index to Dialect Maps of Great Britain, containing a full introduction, an alphabetical word-list and a comprehensive bibliography, fills this gap. As a compendious directory to mapped words it provides not only a lexical compass in a cartographic jungle, but serves as a guide to the major dialect surveys (Survey of English Dialects, Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects, Linguistic Survey of Scotland) and the numerous publications they have spawned. All atlases as well as the maps in the many individual studies and scattered articles are fully documented. Each of the over 2000 lexical entries identifies the original survey by questionnaire number and gives a detailed list of all the references to printed maps in which these words and phrases are contained. The present volume will prove an indispensable guide for all researchers in the field of dialectology and linguistic variation, enabling its users to gain quick access to the various sources of maps. In this way the Index — while still a simple work of reference — may also furnish the materials for more thorough studies of map-making and its implications.
-
-
-
Issues in English Creoles
More LessThe purpose of this volume is to make more accessible, for the use of researchers and students in the field of pidgins and creoles, presentations of the third International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Honolulu, 1975, dealing with English-based creoles. Aside from their documentary value, the ten papers of this volume are of interest for several reasons: they contain interesting data and observations on the languages themselves, in particular Trinidadian Creole, Guyanese Creole, St. Kitts Creole, and Bahamian English. Additionally, the contributions are significant for the insights they have into the importance of variation, a topic which must be confronted by those who investigate pidgins and creoles. Apart from Bickerton’s paper dealing with universals, the papers are presented according to the geographic area where the linguistic systems are used.
-