The Use of Sri Lankan English in Sri Lankan Fictions: A Morphological Analysis

Abstract

- A Language often develops in to a new variety in order to manifest the new geo - socio- cultural phenomena. In the contemporary society, Sri Lankan English (SLE) has become the high yielding way of writing novels/ fictions which are based on Sri Lankan contexts as a result of the phenomenal usage of English by the Sinhala-English bilingual population. Thus, this study aims at emphasizing the fact that the Sri Lankan English writers tend to preserve the Sri Lankan culture and identity by incorporating the lexical items from Sinhala and Tamil languages; the official languages in Sri Lanka. Moreover, the primary objective of this study is to identify and analyze the use of Sri Lankan English in Sri Lankan fictions by referring to five morphological processes. Crucially, five fictions which contain Sri Lankan English lexical items are selected as the sample of the study. In the meantime, data gathering was done as a collaborative work by reading the five fictions in order to identify the Sri Lankan English lexical items and they were analyzed using grids. A qualitative data analysis approach was implemented to identify the use of Sri Lankan English lexical items in Sri Lankan fictions. Henceforth, this study investigates the manner in which the Sri Lankan English morphological processes expose the Sri Lankan culture and tradition whilst playing a functional role in developing the lexical items of Sri Lankan English fictions.