‘It’s a language politic’: Sri Lankan English and linguistic hierarchies in the English language classroom

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the language ideologies of eight in-service English teachers in Sri Lanka in order to understand how these teachers approach the plural Englishes in their classrooms. Specifically, this article traces, three years after World Englishes-oriented linguistics coursework, these instructors’ beliefs about the existence and appropriate use of Sri Lankan Englishes (SLE), and how participating teachers’ beliefs are hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, adhering to or contesting a linguistic hierarchy that privileges ‘native speaker’ varieties using data from semi-structured interviews (Appendix). The data suggest that the participating teachers, despite their shared MA program in teaching English as a second language, have a wide range of understandings of SLE which tend to be complex and unclear, often tangling together ideas of language variety, formality, and proficiency, echoing disagreement among language scholars. The data further suggest that teachers’ choices about promoting SLE in the language classroom are influenced both by their professional and personal experiences of linguistic prejudice and their sense of agency in their teaching context. Ultimately, to address the devaluation of postcolonial forms like SLE, teacher educators must directly confront both this slippery definition and teachers’ sense of social pressure toward ‘standard’ English.

KEYWORDS:

• Sri Lankan Englishes
• World Englishes
• teacher education
• language ideology
• linguistic prejudice
• teacher beliefs

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the [School] Research Foundation [Grant 62605-0050].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the PSC CUNY.

Notes on contributors

Brooke Schreiber

Brooke Schreiber is an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Baruch College. Her research focuses on second language writing pedagogy, translingualism, and global Englishes in teacher education. Her work has appeared in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, the Journal of Second Language Writing, the ELT Journal, Language Learning and Technology, Composition Studies, and Composition Forum, and in several edited collections. She is co-editor of Linguistic Justice on Campus: Pedagogy and Advocacy for Multilingual Writers (2021).

Mihiri Jansz

Mihiri Jansz is a Senior Lecturer at the Postgraduate Institute of English, The Open University of Sri Lanka. Her research interests center on the intersection of language, language ideology, and identity, particularly the identities of Sri Lankan L1 English speakers, as well as the use of technology in English language teaching and global Englishes. Her work has appeared in the ELT Journal, the edited collection Language Teacher Education for Global Englishes, and the newsletter of the British Association of Applied Linguistics.