Abstract:
Language policy has been an ethno-nationalist issue of contention in post-colonial Sri
Lanka (Dharmadasa, 1996; De Silva, 1998; De Silva, 2007). Given Sri Lanka's
language history, the Parliament, a specific locale in which national policy is debated
and formulated, is a space in which language choice both upholds and creates ideologies
to which codes are linked. Code switching, defined by Gumperz (1982) as "the
juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two
different grammatical systems or sub-systems" (p. 59), in such a locale as the
parliament, at specific moments, is noteworthy because they are performances of
linguistic choice. As a shift in codes is a concrete expression of specific ideologies
which may have practical implications at the policy-level, this study positions itself as
exploring these ideologies in greater detail. Influenced by the 'third wave' in
sociolinguistic variationist research, this paper examines code switching as local
practices that index wider ideologies by studying this phenomenon in the Hansard
records of the 2nd sessions of the 6th Parliament of Sri Lanka (i.e. September -
December 2008). Using qualitative conversation analysis, the paper engages with the
larger socio-political implications that undergird code switching practices by
considering what functions code switches play in Parliamentary discourse, and what
comment code switching provides on the framing and discussions in the Parliament.
The paper argues that in addition to functioning as rhetorical devices, language choice
both originates from and reinforces linguistic ideologies in Sri Lanka, and reveals how
situated code choice practices can function as a commentary on wider social ideologies.
