Language Ideologies of Batticaloa Tamil Undergraduates in the University of Kelaniya

Abstract

Recent research in the field of language ideology incorporates language policies due to the contentious politics in Sri Lanka. Although the failures of Sri Lankan language policies have been frequently examined through the observation of people’s language practice across contexts, research that examines how language ideologies of people reflect current language policies are limited. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify distinct language ideologies that are prevalent among Batticaloa Tamil undergraduates in the University of Kelaniya towards English, Tamil, and Sinhala, and to investigate how these language ideologies of Tamils reflect the English language-related polices in Sri Lanka. This multimethod qualitative study will consist of 10 participants and snowball sampling will be employed as the sampling technique. The participants’ language ideologies related to Sinhala, Tamil and English will be identified through language portraits and stimulated-recall interviews. Semi-structured interviews will further be carried out to identify the participants’ ideologies related to speaking English. As secondary data, this study will employ the official language policy in 1956, 13th amendment to the 1978 constitution in 1987, and ‘Speaking English-our way’ movement. The data gathered through language portraits and stimulated-recall interviews will be analyzed thematically to identify ideologies associated with each language. The data gathered through semi-structured interviews will also be analyzed thematically to identify undergraduates’ ideologies related to speaking English. The selected language policies will be triangulated with the participants’ language ideologies, which will be identified through language portraits and semi-structured interviews, to understand how participants’ language ideologies reflect English language-related policies in Sri Lanka. This study will provide a comprehensive representation of how Batticaloa Tamil undergraduates perceive Tamil, English, and Sinhala languages differently. Moreover, as previous research has not exclusively studied how language ideologies reflect English language-related policies in Sri Lanka, this study will rebound to fill this crucial niche.