Abstract:
Language planning is the deliberate, systematic and theory-based attempt to
solve the communication problems of a community by selecting an official
language and standardising its structure. Even though language planning is
generally a national programme undertaken by a government, observations
have been made of institutional language planning situations concerned with
the internal language policy of individual institutes. This study intends to
examine the nature of the institutional language planning situation of the
Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya. Out of the six faculties of the
university three faculties, namely Medicine, Science and Cornmerce &
Management Studies employ English as the sole medium of instruction. The
other three faculties, namely Humanities, Social Sciences and Graduate Studies
employ a bilingual policy of both Sinhalese and English languages as media of
instruction. The Faculty of Humanities, which is the subject of investigation of
the present study, is consist of ten departments. The Department of Buddhist
and Pali Studies conducts lectures in both Sinhalese and English. The
Department of English, conducts lectures only in English, while the English
Teaching Unit conducts lectures in both Sinhalese and English. Yet, it is
mandatory for students to offer exams in English. Five other departments,
namely the Department of Sinhala, the Department of Sanskrit, the Department
of Linguistics, the Department of Western Classical Culture, and the
Department of Fine Arts conduct lectures only in Sinhalese. The Department of
Hindi keeps to a trilingual policy conducting lectures in Sinhalese, English and
Hindi. The Department of Modem Languages conducts lectures mostly in the
respective languages taught, but the Sinhalese and English languages are also
employed where necessary. All these departments except the Department of
Sinhala allow undergraduates offer exams in English on request. From this
brief study it is evident that the language policy of.the faculty is not uniform
and depends vehemently on the subjects taught in each of the departments.
