About S.N. Sridhar

Faculty Website: Shikaripur N. Sridhar's website

Research Interest: watch Interview with Dr. Shikaripur Sridhar

MIC Related Research

I grew up as a multilingual – my mother tongue is Kannada, one of the major regional languages of South India; I learnt Sanskrit, the Classical language of India, Hindi, and English at school. I analyze data from all these languages in my research. I have worked on many aspects of multilingualism:  (a) code-switching and code-mixing (sociocultural and pragmatic functions; syntax and psycholinguistics, esp. mental representation and processing of language mixing); (b) second language acquisition (the role of the first and other language(s) in the use of the second language and the adequacy of models of second language acquisition, eg. contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage, to account for this); consequences of language contact (structural and cultural functions of linguistic convergence); (c) Indian English and other World Englishes – description of their syntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics; their acquisition and use in multilingual contexts, as in South and Southeast Asia and Africa; their functions, (d) cultural and civilizational functions of multilingualism, including use of multilingualism as a stylistic resource in advertising and creative literature. My recent work focuses on (e) how insights from traditionally multilingual communities are crucial for developing valid theories of second language acquisition.  I have taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Bilingualism, Multilingualism, Second Language Acquisition, World Englishes and related topics.