From the Minute to the Meme: Code-Switching, Hinglish, and the Digital Refashioning of Indian English

Abstract

This paper traces the evolution of Indian English from the colonial classroom to the digital screen, focusing on the rise of Hinglish and habitual code-switching as defining features of contemporary urban Indian speech. It argues that if Macaulay's Minute of 1835 inaugurated English as an instrument of colonial administration, the digital age has completed a long process of appropriation in which English has become a flexible resource blended freely with Indian languages. Drawing on Braj Kachru's model of concentric circles, the scholarly tradition of code-switching research from Gumperz to Myers-Scotton, and recent work on language and the internet, the study analyses mixed speech across the domains of cinema, advertising, literature, and social media, and surveys the regional mixed codes that extend beyond Hindi. It contends that Hinglish is not a corruption of English but a creative and rule governed practice that expresses a distinctly Indian modern identity, even as it raises persistent questions of class, access, and linguistic justice.