Bridging Linguistic Gap via Lexical Creativity: A Study of Punnyakante Wijenaike’s Nativised English Expression

Abstract

Contact literatures and bilinguals‟ creativity is a tremendously discussed topic in the global studies of linguistics. Yet, the studies of non-native English literatures animated with a wish to divulge the focal motifs behind the integration of divers strategies of nativisation, is a less discussed theme in the Sri Lankan context. Hence, this study sheds light on the nativisation strategies subsided in the lexical creativity of the bilingual writer Punnyakante Wijenaike by synthesising five of her narrations which includes one novel: Giraya (1971) and four short stories that appear in the collection of short stories To Follow the Sun (1995): Samadhi, Monkeys, The Home Coming and The Honour of Punci Rala’s Wife. The study has drawn the narration: The Village in the Jungle (1913) by the native author: Leonard Woolf to comparatively contextualise the dominant obligations triggering the nativisation of bilinguals‟ English expression. This research applies Kachru‟s and Shridar‟s theories and concepts of contact literatures and bilinguals‟ creativity together with morpho-semantic rules and theories of lexicology as tools for critical analysis of the nativisation strategies submerged in lexical creativity. Through textual analysis, findings revealed six strategies of lexical creativity: lexical borrowing, compound formation, hybridisation, reduplication, modes of addressing and semantic shift in the text of Wijenaike and Woolf, except one deviation: while semantic shift is absent in Woolf‟s, affixation, which is absent in Wijenaike, is present in Woolf‟s. Nevertheless both narrations are productive in most of the strategies of lexical creativity revealing a higher degree of nativisation of English language by incorporating certain items of indigenous Sinhalese lexis. There is evidence that the contextual identity in which the narration is planted has a greater impact on the author‟s inclination to nativise the language.