TY - JOUR
T1 - The political economy of code choice in a “revolutionary society”
T2 - Tamil-English bilingualism in Jaffna, Sri Lanka
AU - Canagarajah, A. Suresh
N1 - Funding Information:
* A grant by the Research and Higher Degrees Committee of the University of Jaffna in 1992, which enabled me to gather much of the data cited here, is gratefully acknowledged. 1Sanskrit is probably the oldest colonial language to have come into contact with Tamil; contemporary attempts to purify Tamil of Sanskrit would require another article. Kailasapathy 1979 is a good introduction to such attempts from the 19th to mid-20th centuries. 2For a perspective on the linguistic situation in Jaffna in terms of caste and religion, see Suseendirarajah 1978, 1980. 3The terms used in this article relating to bilingualism and bilinguality follow definitions in Hamers & Blanc (1989:6-14). Some of the more important definitions are excerpted here for convenience: Bilinguality is "the psychological state of an individual who has access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication" (6). Bilingualism "includes that of bilinguality (or individual bilingualism) but refers equally to the state of a linguistic community in which two languages are in contact with the result that two codes can be used in the same interaction and that a number of individuals are bilingual (societal bilingualism)" (p. 6). LA, LB refer to two languages acquired simultaneously "when the child develops two mother tongues from the onset of language" (10). Regarding dimensions of bilinguality, see Hamers & Blanc, p. 9. 4 English items are presented in standard orthography for ease of reading. When the actual phonological realizations are significant, they are presented within slashes. In the Tamil transcription the lowercase symbols /, /, n, r, s represent dentals, while T, L, N, R, S represent retroflexes. The following transcription conventions are used:
PY - 1995/4
Y1 - 1995/4
N2 - 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).
AB - 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).
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U2 - 10.1017/S0047404500018583
DO - 10.1017/S0047404500018583
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84972167911
SN - 0047-4045
VL - 24
SP - 187
EP - 212
JO - Language in Society
JF - Language in Society
IS - 2
ER -