Intellectual Fashion in India: The Role of Euphemism, Neologism and Slang in Indian English

By Dr.Asma Rizwan, Asst. Professor, People’s Institute of Management & Research, Bhopal.

English like all language is not static. It is ever changing and adopting new words and style or let’s call it fashion. Global English has led to a crisis of terminology. The distinctions between ‘native speaker’, second-language speaker’, and ‘foreign-language user’ have become blurred. English already finds itself in a different mix – nowhere does it enjoy complete hegemony. It is growing as an Asian lingua franca. The British Empire may have been responsible for the global colonisation of the English language, but much to the surprise of traditionalists the globalising forces of commerce, technology, Hollywood and Bollywood mean that the ‘purity’ of the language has been invaded. This has not been largely by ‘Americanisms’, but also by local appropriations and reworking Robert Birchfield once said that “Our language is changing slowly and America is leading the way now, not Britain”. If he was present now he would have added “Asia” to his quote. Here in India we discover fascinating words each day used mostly by the Intelligentsia, politicians, media and the generation next. Even though we find reasonably poor command on the spoken form of English,( only 3% Indians speak proper English) the use of euphemism and slang are quiet prevalent among the common man or the aam admi,( a Hindi term for common man) a very popular term used even by the elite English speaking class in India.

A euphemism is a word or phrase used to mask a rude or offensive concept. These figures of speech provide a technique to avoid taboos by being polite. It is a kind of linguistic dishonesty. Many euphemisms are so common, that we don’t even recognize them as such. Perhaps the best way to learn about euphemisms and their growth is to investigate some example like the toilet room (the word toilet was itself originally a euphemism). (more…)