The impact of monolingual language policies on the multilingual language ecology of Sri Lanka

Abstract

This qualitative study examined the role of different languages used in the country in the lives of 12 participants from the four main ethnic groups of Sri Lanka (i.e., Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, and Burgher). It sought to understand how monolingual language policies have impacted upon the country's plurilingual language ecology. The study examined the language ideologies of participants to understand how structures of social power have worked through monolingual language policies to influence and shape their language behaviors and practices. While the impact that language policies have had on different Sri Lankan languages has been examined, no study has analyzed it through the point of view of language ideologies of actual speakers of different languages. The observations made by the participants show that the monolingual ideologies of the language policies of 1832 and 1956, by assigning sole official language status to English and Sinhala respectively, have caused them to gain dominance and diminished the status of other languages, thereby altering the plurilingual language ecology of Sri Lanka. Their observations also showed how the 1956 policy's establishment of Sinhala as the dominant language within the language ecology of the country had elevated the position of the majority community—the Sinhalese, and strengthened the power of the then government which had ridden into power through the Sinhalese majority vote. The analysis of data also indicated that, although the 1956 policy was implemented with the aim of dismantling the structures of power introduced during colonial rule, both policies have served to support and reinforce a social hierarchy based on a Western model. What the data revealed about the role that the two monolingual language policies of 1832 and 1956 seem to have played in establishing and reinforcing the dominance of Sinhala and English respectively, suggest that although political subjugation of the country by European powers has officially ended, Sri Lanka continues to operate within the structures of power established during colonial times.