Millions of educated Indians use English in some domains, but exactly what is Indian English, how is it best understood and described, and how far is it from the claimed centres of the socio-cultural space accorded to English? Centred around a scholarly dialogue, this book comprises a Target Paper by Rajendra Singh and some responses to it from scholars around the world.  In his Target Paper, Singh examines the status and structure of Indian English and its place in the language ecology of India. His examination of these issues leads him to question the dichotomy ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ varieties of English and to argue that it cannot be sustained. Agnihotri and Singh have in this book broken fresh ground in the study of English, particularly in the study of post-colonial varieties such as Indian English.

Rama Kant Agnihotri D. Phil. (York, UK) retired as Professor of Linguistics from the University of Delhi and is currently working with Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur.

Rajendra Singh is Professor of Linguistics at Université de Montréal, Montreal.

Acknowledgements
About the Contributors
Foreword
Udaya Narayana Singh

Introduction
Rama Kant Agnihotri and Rajendra Singh

SECTION I
The Target Paper

1. Reflections on English in India and Indian English
Rajendra Singh

SECTION II
Responses to the Target Paper

GRAMMATICAL PERSPECTIVES

2. Visible and Invisible Aspects of Language Ability
R. Amritavalli

3. The Classification of Varieties: The Generative Point of View
Rajesh Bhatt

4. Knowledge of English in Post-Colonial Contexts: Native or Non-Native?
Rakesh M. Bhatt

5. Indian English
Colin P. Masica

SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVES

6. Multilingualism and Monolingual Taxonomies and Tests
Rama Kant Agnihotri

7. Be What You Want to Be: Linguistic and Social Consequences of Withholding Native Speaker Status
Ad Backus

8. The Data and the Theory: The Difficult Art of Balancing
Shreesh Chaudhary

9. English in India and Indian English: A Country Divided by the Same Language?
Claudia Lange

10. Native Speaker, Vernacular Universals and New Englishisms
Rajend Mesthrie

11. Distinguishing Native and Non-Native Languages on Historical Grounds
Nikolaus Ritt

CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

12. Debating English Legitimacy: Or Will the True Native User Please Speak Up!
Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn

13. The New World-Order and English in India
Jayant Lele

14. Colonial Hangover and the New ‘Hybrid’ Englishes
K. Rajagopalan

PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

15. Reflections of an English Language Teacher
Leslie Dickinson

16. The ‘Native Speaker’ and Prototypicality
Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk andJaroslaw Weckwerth

SECTION III
MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS AND DISCUSSION

17. Miscellaneous Responses: Experiences, Comments and Questions
Anjuli Gupta-Basu, Stephen Moran, Tariq Rahman,H.K. Dewan and Rakesh Saxena, S. Anand,Jagdeep S. Chhokar

18. Dialogue: Excerpts from the Mysore Dialogue on the Target Paper

Author/Person Index
Subject Index