Sri Lankans' Views on English in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Eras (Hardcover)

This book evaluates the views of different ethnic groups towards the English language in Sri Lanka for a period of almost two centuries. While a few studies have addressed the subject of English in Sri Lanka in a general way, there has been no research showing the specifics of English usage in the major ethnic communities of the country. This text considers notions and attitudes towards English that prevail in Sri Lanka today among writers, language planners, teachers and students, habitual speakers, and infrequent users, as well as elite and non-elite groups in the country. The book also examines colonial and postcolonial writings in three communities, namely the Sri Lankan diaspora and the Tamil and Sinhala communities.

Subathini Ramesh is Professor in Linguistics and former Head of the Department of Linguistics and English at the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. She received her PhD in Linguistics in 2000, and has published several journal articles in the fields of applied linguistics, syntax, translation studies, lexicography and stylistics. She is the editor of the Journal of South Asian Studies, and the author of two books, A Contrastive Study of Nominalization in Tamil and Sinhala (2000) and The Thoughts of Tamil Linguistics (1999). She is also the chief editor of Studies in Sri Lankan Tamil Linguistics and Culture: Prof. S. Suseendirarajahs Commemoration Volume (1999) and co-editor of Current Trends in Tamilology: Prof. S. Rajarams Commemoration Volume (2002). She is also the author of Peculiar Words in Ceylon Tamil (2005) and Grammatical Personalities in Sri Lanka 1 (2008). Mitali P. Wong is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Claflin University, USA. She obtained her PhD in English from the University of Manitoba, Canada. She is the author of The English Language Poetry of South Asians (2013) and Politics and Tropes in Renaissance History Plays (2006). Her publications also include The Fiction of South Asians in North America and the Caribbean (2004) and The Changing World of Contemporary South Asian Poetry in English (2019). She has also published articles on Robert Kroestch, Christopher Marlowe, Bengali films, Bharati Mukherjee, Zhang Jie, Dhan Gopal Mukerji, and race relations in the poems of contemporary South Asian American women poets. She has served as Project Director for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She received the James E. Hunter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2001, and the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015.