How does one communicate in a multilingual society with staggering linguistic diversity? To best characterize the multifaceted dimensions of multilingual communication in India, this chapter will focus on the contemporary and historical study of Hindi–Urdu and Indian English, and their spread in intranational diasporic contexts (e.g., from North to South India) and international diasporic contexts (particularly in South-East Asia). The chapter argues that multilingualism in India is shaped primarily by natural forces of networking and communication (e.g., media, literature, trade, multiple identities, etc.) rather than being the result of exclusive and externally imposed models based on government planning. Shaped by such natural forces, linguistic accommodation with multiple dimensions plays a key role in the formation of the linguistic and transactional characteristics of Hindi–Urdu in intranational and international contexts (as well as English).

This chapter argues that ‘communicating with Asia’ requires intercultural competence. Such competence will not only imply awareness but also understanding of cultural differences. Traditional descriptivist approaches in sociolinguistics, arguably, do not or only insufficiently capture this cultural dimension. Using Hong Kong English as an example, the chapter will attempt to show how the newly emerging paradigms of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics can contribute to a more comprehensive linguistic description and hence to intercultural understanding. The chapter will be divided into three parts: The first part will stress the hermeneutic nature of intercultural communication in English. The second part will demonstrate how cultural patterns expressed in Hong Kong English − specifically conceptualizations pertaining to ghosts1 and related concepts – can be systematically elicited and analyzed. The third part will introduce a concrete lexicographic application of the insights discussed in the preceding parts, as realized in A Dictionary of Hong Kong English (Cummings and Wolf 2011).

This chapter aims to find out whether preposition stranding (i.e., a preposition that appears without an NP complement) or pied-piping (i.e., a preposition in clause-initial position) (Hoffmann 2007) is a phenomenon in the Philippine variety of English. Using spoken and written texts from the Philippine component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-PHI), the study describes the distribution of preposition stranding and pied-piping in preposed, interrogative, and wh-clauses. Data show that preposition stranding appeared more frequently in spoken texts than in written texts and that, while pied-piping (which is associated with formal or expository registers) showed up in both spoken and written texts, the frequency of its occurrence was higher in the spoken than in the written genre. Findings of the study are related to Filipinos’ tendency to prefer the formal style of English, regardless of the context in which the language is used, or what Gonzalez (1991: 334) calls the “stylistic underdifferentiation” of Philippine English.

This chapter compares two postcolonial varieties, Singapore English and Malaysian English, with a neighboring learner variety from Indonesia, all of which share Malay as a common substrate language. The comparative analysis reveals a common inventory of nonstandard features, albeit with differences such as features unique to a particular variety, or a wider range of realizations of a given feature in the learner variety. In terms of frequency, the learner variety displays higher levels of nonstandard morphology and syntax, even when accounting for register variation. The implications for communicating with Asia pertain to more predictable nonstandard features in the postcolonial varieties due to the relatively narrow range of realizations of features, as well as the ability of speakers of postcolonial varieties to accommodate their language production toward standard English, which is not the case for the Indonesian learners.

Informed by a European perspective, this essay is designed to approach the key issue of how we can possibly understand Asia (and South Asia or India in particular) through the English language and through literature in English. Starting from a working definition of “understanding” based on the ambiguous character of linguistic signs as the instruments of cultural perception and mediation, I briefly conceptualize the potential of language and literature in the process of “deep understanding,” with special emphasis on the specific role of creative wiriting (such as poetry or fiction) in this process.

The major part of my contribution is reserved to reviewing the ongoing debate of understanding and mediating South Asia through English writing (both by Western and Indian authors) on three historical levels: Colonial (c. 1820–1940), Post-Independence (1947–1960), The New Millennium (since 1990). This review correlates theoretical and programmatic statements with outstanding literary experiments.

Chinese language varieties, including both Mandarin and dialects such as Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and so on, are widely spoken in Malaysia, where the Chinese diaspora constitutes 24.6 percent of the total population. This chapter reviews the history and current situation of these Chinese language varieties in Malaysia from the following perspectives: (1) the demographic and regional distribution of these varieties, (2) the spread and standardization of modern Chinese since the twentieth century, (3) the role of the Chinese language in education, (4) language contact due to the frequent interaction with ethnic Malays, and (5) the vitality of the Chinese language in Malaysia. The chapter closes with predictions of future developments of the Chinese language in Malaysia.

The use of nativized multi-word verbal combinations (MVCs) such as discuss about, emphasize on and raise up is a characteristic of Singapore English (SgE) that has attracted much criticism from proponents of the standard language ideology in Singapore. In spite of this, these features have continued to prevail in SgE. Using a corpus-based approach, the present study demonstrates that nativized MVCs are relatively widespread, occurring in all six registers represented in the Singapore component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SIN), and even in the most formal register of printed texts. Although not as common as their standard single-word variants (e.g., discuss, emphasize and raise) and dispreferred in careful language use, data from ICE-SIN show that these features occur in stable syntactic environments, and are assigned specific grammatical functions and structural characteristics that clearly define them. The fact that they can be found even in the most formal of text categories, such as parliamentary debates, legal cross-examinations, legal presentations, broadcast news, examination scripts and academic writing, suggests a need for the reevaluation of links between adherence to native-speaker norms, and user and uses variables (e.g., education level and social class of the speaker, and formality of the domain). Further, it suggests that these features have been institutionalized in SgE, or in Winford’s (2003) terminology, ‘conventionalized as part of the communal grammar’ of the language (p. 236). This chapter argues that they are structural and distributional manifestations of the stabilization of nativized MVCs in SgE.

This chapter traces the history of the privileged role of English in the domains of power in Pakistan. English entered these domains and became a marker of the elite culture in South Asia. Its presence in the education sector, which is the supplier of people skilled in English to all other domains, is given special attention. As English became a second language, it became a non-native variety in its own right as it did in African and other Asian countries. This variety is called Pakistani English (PakE) and some aspects of it are described synoptically. Moreover, the way English is used informally, and sometimes even in formal written discourses, involves the use of expressions from indigenous languages. Code-switching is regarded as a form of linguistic corruption or incompetence by some, but, among other things, is a device for signalling power-relations or class. It may serve the function of crossing into the desiderated class of fluent English speakers. In order to illustrate that code-switching is not English-induced, samples of it in Persian and Urdu from the Medieval Period will be provided; they show that code-switching is not a corruption of English but is both local and recognized in high literature. By presenting historical and sociolinguistic background, this chapter will provide a more holistic understanding of the interaction of English with the history of South Asia in general and that of Pakistan in particular.

This chapter argues that ‘communicating with Asia’ requires intercultural competence. Such competence will not only imply awareness but also understanding of cultural differences. Traditional descriptivist approaches in sociolinguistics, arguably, do not or only insufficiently capture this cultural dimension. Using Hong Kong English as an example, the chapter will attempt to show how the newly emerging paradigms of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics can contribute to a more comprehensive linguistic description and hence to intercultural understanding. The chapter will be divided into three parts: The first part will stress the hermeneutic nature of intercultural communication in English. The second part will demonstrate how cultural patterns expressed in Hong Kong English − specifically conceptualizations pertaining to ghosts1 and related concepts – can be systematically elicited and analyzed. The third part will introduce a concrete lexicographic application of the insights discussed in the preceding parts, as realized in A Dictionary of Hong Kong English (Cummings and Wolf 2011).

This chapter investigates the role of English for the Japanese with a consideration of its historical and sociolinguistic background, followed by an analysis of English language teaching policies and pedagogies in Japan in terms of their struggles to cope with today’s urgent needs for international communication. English used to be perceived as a tool for absorbing advanced Western technologies and cultures, and was taught solely for passive acquisition of knowledge. However, recently, the Japanese have found it imperative to express themselves to the outer world in English in various domains, including the economy, politics, technology and academic studies; hence, English is being taught for communicative purposes. A major obstacle to acquiring English for communication is the predominance of native-speakerism, a belief that native speaking English is the only model, neglecting the potential of linguistic creativity or Japanization of English. A short discussion of the situation in Korea, the closest neighbor, will be added.

This chapter seeks to find out if the phonology of Singapore English (SgpE) has been Americanized. This chapter will focus on four pronunciation features in SgpE, namely, the postvocalic-r, taps, the pronunciation of the vowel [æ] in dance, and the vowel [eɪ] in tomato. In order to ascertain if there has been a “shift” or change in the phonology of SgpE, speakers of an older group aged forty and above will be compared with a younger group of speakers who are aged between twenty and twenty-five. The informants for the data also consist of speakers of all three major ethnic groups in Singapore – the Chinese, Malay, and Indians, and a comparison will be made between these three groups to see if any particular ethnic variety of SgpE is more susceptible to Americanization. The results show that some American English (AmE) features are not prevalent across all age and ethnic groups. While it is perhaps not surprising that younger speakers display significantly more AmE features than older speakers, it is interesting to note that the speakers of the Chinese ethnic group are the ones producing more AmE phonological features, as compared to the speakers of the other two ethnic groups. The results on the whole suggest that postcolonial Englishes, such as SgpE, adapt their linguistic features with the force of globalization.

This chapter reviews studies on Indian English prosody, in the main, syllable structure, word-stress, speech rhythm, intonation and information structure. The review is supplemented with a critical discussion of the investigations of the prosodic features, especially those that have a bearing on related issues, such as word-stress, and that are a major factor in the difference between native varieties of English (NE, for short) and Indian varieties of English (IndE, for short). The topics are presented with a view to approaching the problem of difficulties in the communicative import of IndE speech.