English in Hindi prime-time television news: a comparative study of linguistic hybridity across four Indian news channels
Abstract
This study examines patterns of English usage and linguistic hybridity in Hindi prime-time television news through a comparative analysis of four leading Indian news channels: Aaj Tak, Zee News, NDTV India, and TV9 Bharatvarsh . Drawing on sociolinguistics, media discourse studies, and World Englishes, it analyses how English lexical items are incorporated into Hindi news discourse through code-mixing, code-switching, lexical borrowing, and hybrid compounds. A mixed-methods approach combines corpus analysis of prime-time news broadcasts with a questionnaire survey examining audience perceptions of English use in Hindi television news. Because the broadcast corpus was collected during July 2020, at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study also captures the emergence of health-related English neologisms in Hindi news discourse. Although the dataset represents a specific historical period, it provides a valuable snapshot of linguistic innovation during a time of rapid social and public health change. These observations offer insights into processes of lexical innovation, semantic adaptation, and language change during a period of significant societal disruption. The findings indicate that English functions as an integral component of contemporary Hindi television news discourse rather than merely a supplementary linguistic resource. Although all four channels employ English, the distribution and communicative functions of English lexical items vary across channels in line with editorial style and institutional identity. English appears to be strategically employed to convey authority, immediacy, technical precision, and newsworthiness, while it may also function as a resource for audience engagement and channel branding. Overall, the study contributes to research on sociolinguistics, media discourse, bilingualism, and World Englishes by demonstrating how Hindi television news has developed a distinctive bilingual media register shaped by globalization, institutional practices, and changing audience expectations.