STUDENT SLANG AT IIT MADRAS: A LINGUISTIC FIELD STUDY Magisterarbeit Technische Universität Chemnitz Fachbereich Anglistik/Amerikanistik Prof. Josef Schmied 20. Februar 2006 (überarbeitete Version) Evelyn Richter Am Sonnenhang 35 09488 Thermalbad Wiesenbad OT Schönfeld Email: [email protected] Magister Anglistik/Amerikanistik & Grafische Technik CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 6 2 DEFINITIONS AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF THE SPEECH COMMUNITY................................................................................................. 7 2.1 Defining Slang ................................................................................................ 7 2.2 English in India ............................................................................................ 12 2.2.1 The language situation in India.............................................................. 12 2.2.2 The status of English in India ................................................................ 12 2.2.3 Some properties of Indian English......................................................... 13 2.3 The speech community ................................................................................ 16 2.3.1 The Indian Institute of Technology Madras........................................... 16 2.3.2 The student community at IIT Madras................................................... 17 3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 20 3.1 Collecting Expressions................................................................................. 20 3.2 Questionnaires.............................................................................................. 21 3.2.1 Personal information.............................................................................. 21 3.2.2 Questionnaire I....................................................................................... 21 3.2.3 Questionnaire II...................................................................................... 22 3.2.4 Questionnaire III .................................................................................... 23 3.3 Interviews...................................................................................................... 25 3.4 Restriction to the IITM student community.............................................. 26 3.5 My personal influence as researcher.......................................................... 27 2 4 EVALUATION OF RESULTS............................................................... 28 4.1 Evaluation of the questionnaires ................................................................ 28 4.1.1 Evaluation of Questionnaire I ................................................................ 28 4.1.2 Evaluation of Questionnaire II............................................................... 29 4.1.3 Evaluation of Questionnaire III.............................................................. 32 5 FINDING PATTERNS........................................................................... 41 5.1 Classification according to etymological origin and applied word formation patterns ................................................................................................... 41 5.1.1 Borrowings............................................................................................. 41 5.1.2 Derivations............................................................................................. 45 5.1.3 Shortenings............................................................................................. 46 5.1.4 Semantic changes of English words....................................................... 48 5.1.5 Scientific variables................................................................................. 49 5.1.6 Pronunciation changes ........................................................................... 50 5.1.7 Overuse of words or phrases.................................................................. 50 5.1.8 Grammatical peculiarities ...................................................................... 51 5.2 Classification according to context............................................................. 53 5.2.1 Academics.............................................................................................. 53 5.2.2 Everyday life on campus........................................................................ 54 5.2.3 Fellow students ...................................................................................... 55 5.2.4 Taboo topics........................................................................................... 57 6 CONCLUSION & OUTLOOK ............................................................... 59 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................. 60 7.1 Primary Literature ...................................................................................... 60 7.2 Secondary Literature................................................................................... 61 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................... 62 9 APPENDICES ...................................................................................... 64 3 9.1 Appendix: Translations of the Lingo paragraph ...................................... 64 9.1.1 The original paragraph........................................................................... 64 9.1.2 Translations of the paragraph................................................................. 64 9.2 Appendix: Annotated chat conversations.................................................. 69 9.2.1 Chat Conversation I ............................................................................... 69 9.2.2 Chat Conversation II .............................................................................. 72 9.2.3 Chat Conversation III............................................................................. 73 9.2.4 Chat Conversation IV............................................................................. 76 9.3 Appendix: Questionnaire I.......................................................................... 78 9.4 Appendix: Questionnaire II ........................................................................ 82 9.5 Appendix: Questionnaire III....................................................................... 88 9.6 Appendix: Word list of IITM slang terms................................................. 94 4 LIST OF FIGURES Table 1: IIT Madras students 2004/2005 according to degree ................................. 17 Table 2: IIT Madras students 2004/2005 according to gender ................................. 18 Figure 3: Average & standard deviation of the number of answers in Questionnaire II according to gender & degree................................................................................ 30 Figure 4: Slang use according to languages ............................................................. 33 Figure 5: Frequency of the use of slang .................................................................... 34 Figure 6: With whom the students use slang ............................................................. 35 Figure 7: Use of slang according to text types .......................................................... 36 Figure 8: The register of slang .................................................................................. 37 Figure 9: Reasons for the use of slang ...................................................................... 38 Figure 10: The importance of slang for IITM student identity.................................. 39 Figure 11: Gajendra Circle (GC).............................................................................. 47 Figure 12: Collocates of to put .................................................................................. 51 5 1 INTRODUCTION Every student who starts university faces the same problems. He has to arrange his timetable, find his way around on campus, get accustomed to the hostel life and find new friends. Yet, all these tasks can prove enormously difficult even to the smartest and most communicative fresher because he might not be able to understand the language used on campus. It is everywhere around him: on signboards, in department and hostel notices, and especially in the answers his senior students are giving to his questions. Students at a university often develop their own in-group vocabulary which only insiders will understand. The quantity of such student slang expressions and the degree of their use varies from university to university and maybe even within the campus of one university. At the Chemnitz University of Technology (CUT), for example, the in-group vocabulary is mainly limited to place name references. The blending StraNa, for instance, stands for (Universitätsteil) Straße der Nationen, a street name in Chemnitz and the location of one part of the university. However, at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) the quantity of slang expressions is much higher. This is why several web pages with long lists of slang terms exist1 and a student even wrote an article related to this topic in the IITM student magazine The Fourth Estate. In November 2002, Arjun Chennu, at that time a fresher, described the difficulties a new student encounters at IITM in his article “What's this ES funda?”. He dedicated an entire paragraph to