Modernity and English mixing: A study of Nepali television commercials 1 --Khagendra Acharya In this paper, I investigate the issue of English mixing in Nepali television commercials. More specifically, based on qualitative data taken from a total of four hours of Nepali TV commercials broadcasted on the major Nepali television stations -Avenues Television and Kantipur Television from 7am to 9am and 7pm to 9pm since 1 July to 1 October 2009, I examine the motivations for English mixing in

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... TV commercials. For the analysis, primarily I categorize them into two major types, Nepali-only (NO) and English mixed (EM). NO includes commercials aired in Nepali only and EM includes advertisements aired in Nepali in juxtaposition with English. After it, I study the differences between EM and NO as the dichotomous treatment of NO and EM is critical in examining the purpose of English-mixing. The findings suggest that English-mixing in Nepalese TV commercials is a carefully constructed exemplar of the marketing of modernity. Though the issue of modernity invokes geographical, sociopolitical, cultural and other concerns and emerges with the notions of alternative modernity (Appadurai, 1996; Gaonkar, 1999) , "an ethnocentric prison" (Taylor, 1995, p. 28), "Ethnocentric diffusionist ideology" (Friedman, 2006, p. 429) and so forth, a very strong paradigm in modernity is a linear model. In this model, "[modernity] cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind (Berman, 1983, p. 15)". Of such uniting factors one of the most influencial is the use of English language. In a sense, English use in any discourse signifies orientation of non-