| dc.description.abstract | Defined as the "language used by Sri Lankans
who choose to use English for whatever purpose in Sri
Lanka (Gunesekera, 2005, p. 11), Sri Lankan English (SLE)
is gradually accepted as a newly institutionalized variety
of English, with its unique phonological, morphological
lexical, and syntactic features. SLE vocabulary has been
identified as one of the most prominent features of Sri
Lankan English`s unique linguistic identity (Gunesekera,
2005; Meyler, 2007). Among the limited number of efforts
in codification of SLE vocabulary, Michael Meyler`s 'A
Dictionary of Sri Lankan English` could be considered
the most elaborate. Although the publication of the
book is one of the most important milestones in the
field of SLE vocabulary studies, certain drawbacks were
identified, including the lack of nuanced understanding
of the socio-linguistic circumstances of the language on
the part of the codifier and the seemingly biased data
collection method which seem to exclude the lexical
usages of other less prestigious varieties of SLE. Therefore,
the research gap is identified to be the lack of an insider
perspective on the codified vocabulary of SLE, where
an insider who speaks English as their second language
and/or bilingual in English and Tamil or Sinhala could
utilize his/her nuanced socio-linguistic understanding of
first and second language varieties (Sinhala and Tamil)
to provide affirmation of the authenticity and accuracy
of codified vocabulary of Sri Lankan English. Thus, the
present study applies the theories of positionality and
reflexivity in providing a detailed reflexive analysis of the
lexical items included in Meyler`s dictionary, in order to
provide a subjective analysis of codified lexical items in
the dictionary. The researcher will investigate to what
extent the codifier has done justice to the meaning of
a lexical item, accuracy of the meaning and recorded
usages, possible alterations to the meaning, socio-cultural
nuances associated with the lexical items, alternative
usages and also the ability of the lexical item to show the
language of other speech communities with less power
and prestige. | en_US |
