Indian English in use: a pukka language

This paper presents descriptive generalisations about lexical, morphosyntactical and stylistic features of Indian English, a localised variety which works as a pukka (‘authentic, real’) language. After a brief historical and social presentation of the Indian context, the paper analyses examples of Indian English drawn from non-literary genres and domains, focusing in particular on the following: language on the Internet, advertising and public signs, food discourse and cookery books, matrimonial advertisements, obituaries. These text-types show the idiosyncrasies of Indian English, a non-native additional language, which benefits from contacts with vernacular languages through different strategies, such as code-mixing, syntactic fusion, loanwords. In the light of the extremely complex cultural scenario of India, the paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach by considering this sociolingustic context also from a postcolonial perspective. What emerges concerns the idea of Indianness in English language as a tool for the representation of local social and cultural practices.