Babu English is arguably one of the most popular varieties of Indian English and ironically the least studied too. An attempt to define the variety lands one in a mushy land of definitions that are untenable. It has been described variously by different scholars while German linguist Schuchardt classifies it as a pidgin, Kachru defines it as a…

Recently, Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy won the 2018 Research Impact Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the largest international organization that specializes in the teaching and studies of composition. This recognition seems to signal a turn to transliteracy education, i.e., English writing…

An examination of the social psychological basis of style shifting suggests that, contrary to Labovian theory, many style shifts are not a function of shifts in attention to speech and that there are other more explanatory ways of analyzing style shifts. Some reasons for this view are: (1) attention to speech is sometimes negatively correlated…

Deviation for native-speaker norms in non-native varieties of English are often regarded as interlanguage features which must either be weeded out through teaching or which the learner will eventually abandon as his competency moves in the direction of the target language. It is argued in this paper that some deviations are motivated by style,…

Investigates target language variability between speaking and writing in the second language acquisition of non-native English speakers. Results reveal that as narrators advance in English proficiency, they develop more abstract content and reported style in speech and writing and that speech and writing become more interactive. (28 references)…

From a consideration of variability in language-learner and language-user data, the concept of proficiency is considered in relation to models of second and foreign language learning. Proficiency is defined in relation to four separate dimensions: grammatical well-formedness, speech-act rules, functional elaboration, and code diversity. This…