On liberation of English from purist pundithood through nativization in Nepal

Abstract

This qualitative content analysis paper attempted to explore the linguistic, creative, and pragmatic nativization employed by creative Nepali authors of English in their writings. I purposively selected three anthologies of stories, four novels, eight essays, one newspaper article, and four news stories/reports. Then, I went through the contents, examined the language used in those texts, noted down the unique features of Nepali English, and thematized them under linguistic, creative, and pragmatic nativization to make the analysis more explicit. I found that the creative Nepali authors of English intentionally nativized English to convey a distinct sense of Nepaliness and to deconstruct the so-called sacred cow model of English. Findings reveal that policymakers and pedagogues need to shift from the monomodel approach to the functional polymodel approach that only values the features of Nepali English as innovations, rather than errors.