Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:14:26.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The political economy of code choice in a “revolutionary society”: Tamil-English bilingualism in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

A. Suresh Canagarajah
A. Suresh Canagarajah
Affiliation:
Department of English, Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY 10010
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the persistence of Tamil-English bilingualism in the Marxist/Nationalist de-facto separate state of Jaffna (Sri Lanka) through an integrated macro- and micro-sociolinguistic analysis of code choice in the community. While Tamil is dominant at present, the international hegemony of English is nevertheless subtly felt. There are now few L2 dominant or balanced bilinguals; grammatical competence in “standard English” is declining; Tamil has taken over many conventionally English domains; extensive use of unmixed English is reduced to a few formal contexts; and political pressure proscribes English. However, through code-switching activity, English continues to be used in a more pervasive form than ever before, in conventional and unconventional contexts, with complex communicative competence. Code-switching helps reconcile the socio-psychological conflicts of the community and assures the continuity of bilingualism (defying prophecies of English death), with the possibility of an Englishized Tamil becoming an independent code. (Bilingualism, code-switching, English, language choice)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 187 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Annamalai, E. (1978). The anglicized Indian languages: A case of code mixing. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 7:239–47.Google Scholar
Arumugam, S. (Navalar) (1872). Yaalpaana samaya nilai [Religion in Jaffna]. (Reprinted, Jaffna: Navalar, 1951.)Google Scholar
Blanc, Michel, & Hamers, Josiane F. (1982). Social networks and multilingual behaviour: The Atlantic provinces project. Paper given at the Fourth Sociolinguistics Symposium,University of Sheffield,England.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (1992). Codeswitching and the exclusivity of social identities: Some data from Campus Kiswahili. In Eastman, Carol (ed.), Codeswitching, 57–70. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information 16:645–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, A. Suresh (1992). Research report: Ethnography of argumentative discourse in a Saiva Tamil village. Mimeo, Research and Higher Degrees Committee, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, A. Suresh (1993). Ambiguities in student opposition to reproduction through ESL: Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom. TESOL Quarterly 27:601–26.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, A. Suresh (1995). Use of English borrowings as discourse strategy by Tamil fish vendors. Multilingua 4:1. 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, A. Suresh & Saravanapava Iyer, M.. (1993). Social inequality and the distribution of English proficiency among Jaffna university students. Paper presented to the Jaffna Science Association, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka.Google Scholar
Chelliah, John V. (1922). A century of English education: The story of Batticotta Seminary and Jaffna College. Vaddukottai: Jaffna College.Google Scholar
Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1946). The religious basis of the forms of Indian society. New York: Noonday.Google Scholar
de Souza, Doric (1969). The teaching of English. The Ceylon Observer, 04 pp. 18, 29.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1988). Language death. In Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Language: The socio-cultural context (Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, 4), 184–92. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eastman, Carol (1992), ed. Codeswitching. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernando, Chitra (1977). English and Sinhala bilingualism in Sri Lanka. Language in Society 6:341–60.Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. (1967). Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues 32:29–38.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan (1989). Language and political economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 18:345–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard; Coupland, Justine; Coupland, Nikolas (1991), eds. Contexts of accommodation: Developments in applied sociolinguistics. Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halverson, John (1966). Prolegomena to the study of Ceylon English. University of Ceylon Review 24:61–75.Google Scholar
Hamers, Josiane, & Blanc, Michel H. A. (1989). Bilinguality and bilingualism. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (1982). Negotiations of language choice in Montreal. In Gumperz, John (ed.), Language and social identity, 108–18. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (1992). The politics of codeswitching and language choice. In Eastman, (ed.), 124–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kailasapathy, K. (1979). The Tamil purist Movement. Sri Lanka Journal of South Asian Studies 1:34–63.Google Scholar
Kandiah, Thiru (1979). Disinherited Englishes: The case of Lankan English. Navasilu 3:75–89.Google Scholar
Knab, Tim, & Hasson de Knab, L. (1979). Language death in the valley of Puebla: A sociogeographic approach. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 5:471–83.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol (1990). Elite closure as boundary maintenance: The case of Africa. In Weinstein, Brian (ed.), Language policy and political development, 25–42. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Pandit, Ira (1986). Hindi-English code switching, mixed Hindi-English. Delhi: Datta.Google Scholar
Passe, Hector A. (1943). The English language in Ceylon. University of Ceylon Review 1:50–65.Google Scholar
Perinpanayagam, R. Siddharthan (1988). The social foundation of educational and economic activity in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. In Chitralega, M. et al. (eds.), Kailasapathy Commemoration Volume, 83–100. Jaffna: Catholic Press.Google Scholar
Platt, John T. (1980). The lingue franche of Singapore: An investigation into strategies of interethnic communication. In Giles, Howard et al. (eds.), Language: Social psychological perspectives, 171–77. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana (1987). Contrasting patterns of code-switching in two communities. Wande, Erling et al. (eds.), Aspects of multilingualism (Proceedings from the Fourth Nordic Symposium on Bilingualism), 51–77. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Pushparajan, M. (1985). Piiniks. In Cheran, Ruthramoorthy et al. (eds.), maranattul vaalvoom: 31 kavinjarkaLin 82 araciyal kavitaikaL [Let's live amidst death: A collection of 82 political poems by 31 poets in Tamil], 89. Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Tamiliyal.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne (1989). Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rubin, Joan (1968). National bilingualism in Paraguay. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David; Poplack, Shana; & Vanniarajan, Swathi (1990). The case of the nonce loan in Tamil. Language Variation and Change 2:71–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian (1986). The social life of language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Scotton, Carol M. (1982). The possibility of switching. Anthropological Linguistics 24:432–44.Google Scholar
Scotton, Carol M. (1983). The negotiation of identities in conversation: A theory of markedness and code choice. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 44:116–36.Google Scholar
Sivatamby, Karthigesu (1990). The ideology of Saiva-Tamil integrality: Its socio-historical significance in the study of Yalppanam Tamil society. Lanka 5:176–82.Google Scholar
Smolicz, J. T. (1980). Core values and cultural identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 4:75–90.Google Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard (1988). Bilingualism. In Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Language: The sociocultural context (Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, IV), 100–18. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Suseendirarajah, S. (1978). Caste and language in Jaffna society. Anthropological Linguistics 20:312–19.Google Scholar
Suseendirarajah, S. (1980). Religion and language in Jaffna society. Anthropological Linguistics 22:345–62.Google Scholar
Suseendirarajah, S. (1992). English in our Tamil society: A sociolinguistic appraisal. Mimeo. Academic Forum, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka.Google Scholar
Swigart, Leigh (1992). Two codes or one? The insiders' view and the description of codeswitching in Dakar. In Eastman, Carol (ed.), Codeswitching, 83–102. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Wickramasuriya, S. (1976). Strangers in their own land: The radical protest against English education in colonial Ceylon. Navasilu 1:15–31.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. (1985). Language variation and cultural hegemony: Toward an integration of sociolinguistic and social theory. American Ethnologist 12:738–48.Google Scholar