The Dialectics of Hinglish: A Perspective

Abstract

In India, the phenomenon of Hinglish has rapidly emerged from being a fashionable style of speech to a significant force instrumental in bringing about a major paradigm shift in social demography. Globalization and economic liberalization has served as catalysts to amplify this uniform communication code, which is currently blurring the linguistic barriers in a country speaking 780 dialects. Hinglish is redefining the cultural conventions in marketing/advertisement, Bollywood, and communication styles present in social media and the Internet. Its claim to be a proper language is substantiated by its acknowledgement on prestigious literary forums. While the concept is welcomed by both the marketplace and the masses as a beneficial symbiotic experience, it has also left the stakeholders of standard language, both Hindi and English, fretting and fuming. Amidst all the celebrations and concerns, the corpus of Hinglish is constantly widening and evolving because it is has been internalized, and not imposed, by the society as its own creation. The language accommodates diversity, lends flexibility, and suits the temperament of modern India. This paper studies how Hinglish has managed to seep into the very fabric of Indian society, restructuring the governing norms and practices. The paper also attempts to reflect how Hinglish is much more than just a language hybrid.