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In:Grammatical Change in English World-Wide
Edited by Peter Collins
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 67] 2015
► pp. 411–436

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Cultural keywords in context

A pilot study of linguistic acculturation in South Asian Englishes

 | Justus Liebig University Giessen
 | Justus Liebig University Giessen
Published online: 24 February 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.67.17muk
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
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