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

ABSTRACTThis 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.