English for International Communication

English for International Communication
(First published in Sat Mag The Island , 20th June 2009)

by
Rohana R. Wasala

The question of the relation between Standard English (‘English English’ as some people who scoff at the idea of recognizing a local variety of English for Sri Lanka call it in lighter vein) and Sri Lankan English could be looked at from two different perspectives, which have to do with the two major functions that English performs in the world: English serves as the lingua franca of international communication on the one hand, and on the other, as a foundation for constructing cultural identities as David Graddol in his 1998 book ‘The Future of English?’ points out. While the first of these puts a premium on mutual comprehensibility and common standards, the latter feeds a tendency to promote local varieties, and linguistic hybridity.

It is a truism that no language possesses any monolithic uniformity in terms of its sound system, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar across the geographical and conceptual ranges of its prevalence; instead there is extreme variety. Prof. Randolph Quirk (co-author of ‘A University Grammar of English’ , 1973) presents one way of analyzing this variety. He states that a language develops different forms according to the geographical regions where it is used, and also according to such factors as the education and the social background of its speakers, the subject matter, the medium (speech or writing), attitude (to do with style), and interference (i.e. ‘transfer’ of mother tongue elements to a second language by a learner, to use a term preferred in more recent times to refer to the influence of a learner’s mastery of his/her mother tongue on second language learning).

The larger the number of users of a language, the wider the geographical area they are spread over, and the greater the barriers to communication that emerge among groups of such users due to physical distance or other forms of alienation, the more prone is that language to develop different ‘dialects’. It goes without saying that English, being arguably the most widely used world language today, is particularly vulnerable to such differentiation. In fact , the concept of ‘New Englishes’ or polycentrism (a number of standard forms instead of one) is already more than half a century old. .

This is how Professor David Crystal defines ‘New Englishes’ in The Penguin Dictionary of Language’ (Second edition, 1998): The name often given to the national varieties of English which have emerged around the globe, especially since the 1960s in those countries which opted to make English an official language upon independence. Regionally distinctive use of vocabulary, pronunciation, and (to a much lesser extent) grammar is found in all such countries, but often only on a very limited scale. The term is really applicable only when there has been considerable linguistic development away from the traditional standards of British and American English, with some degree of local standardization (e.g. in the press), as has happened in India, Ghana, and Singapore, and perhaps a dozen other countries where English is used as a second language..... .

Given the modern ease of communication, and the enhanced mobility of populations made possible through unprecedented technological advances, the process of ‘decentralizing’ Standard English may be expected to lose its momentum.

Standard English is the variety that is used in newspapers, books, and other forms of print; it is the English that is taught as a second language to those whose mother tongue is other than English; it is the language of education. Standard English is usually described more in terms of the written (i.e. grammar, vocabulary, spelling) than the spoken language.

Up until half a century ago the two major national varieties of English (British and American) used to dominate the English speaking world, with Sri Lanka like the rest of the British Commonwealth subscribing to the former. The rapid development of English as a global medium since then has led to a growing tendency among linguists to recognize other widely used national varieties (e.g. Australian, Canadian, Caribbean, Indian, South African, South Asian, etc). as acceptable standard forms as well.

‘The Oxford Companion to the English Language’ (ed. Tom McArthur, 1992) says that Sri Lankan English ‘… is not itself a monolithic system; it consists of a range of subvarieties based on proficiency in it and the users’ language background. It is in fact a subvariety of South Asian English similar to Indian English with which it shares many features...’.

As Professor David Crystal points out in The Penguin Dictionary Of Language referred to above, there is a ‘tension between the demand for mutual intelligibility among these nations and the demand for linguistic distinctiveness as a marker of national identity’
So one could say that the notion of Sri Lankan English is, among other things, about linguistic distinctiveness as a marker of Sri Lankan national identity. The meaning of this rather glib statement depends on how the extremely volatile key terms ‘Sri Lankan English’ and ‘Sri Lankan national identity’ are defined. I find both dauntingly elusive concepts. However, for the purpose of this essay I will briefly state my tentative layman’s understanding of these two terms.

To take Sri Lankan national identity first, no one can deny that there is something in our national status and character that distinguishes us from other nations; it transcends the ethnic, cultural, and social differences that are found in our society; despite these differences, a feeling of oneness holds us together. In my opinion, there are some key factors that contribute to this sense of identity among us Sri Lankans of diverse ethnicities, languages, religious and social backgrounds. One is that we are citizens of one country; another is that we identify ourselves as members of a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society implicitly committed to peaceful coexistence; and a third is that as a nation we share a common history of foreign domination; a fourth would be that broadly we subscribe to mutually compatible world views that permit us to look at the rest of the world with a certain sense of humility, tolerance, and compassion (obviously, the influence of four of the world’s most renowned religions whose adherents form almost the whole of the population of the country). However, being human, we cannot help feeling vulnerable to certain subterranean tensions among us, which are natural and inevitable. Fortunately, though, these are never so pronounced as to cause significant communal disharmony. Absolute freedom from vestigial tribal instincts is not humanly possible for most, but an ability to suppress them for the common good is expected of all, and this basic criterion of communal amity is rarely violated in our country (something that is contrary to what the frequently asserted jaundiced views of certain commentators who are essentially ignorant of the moral maturity of the common people would have us believe). .

Our giant neighbour India is a myriad times more divided than Sri Lanka in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, caste, etc. Yet, they do recognize a certain Indian national identity. Just as Indians are Indians, Sri Lankans are Sri Lankans, whether they are Sinhalese, Tamils, Malays, Buddhists, Christians, or Muslims.

This is the Sri Lankanness that ‘Sri Lankan English’ is expected to express. (Whether many of those Sri Lankans who write in English are actually familiar enough with the grassroots cultural ethos of their own native land to authentically represent it in their writing is a different matter. Some of the extremely prejudiced among the ‘English educated’ might even consider those without their kind of education to be cultureless!) It may be safely asserted that like Sri Lankan national identity, Sri Lankan English is a diversity. One cogent reason for this is that our native language background itself is not homogeneous. The two main national languages Sinhala and Tamil are significantly different from each other in their sound systems, grammar, and vocabulary. This fact is bound to influence the way Sri Lankans from different native language backgrounds speak English and adopt its idiom for their purposes.

In spite of its being a favourite topic of frequent and popular discussion, English is still a minority language in our country, even at an elementary level of proficiency. But this will not detract from its importance, because it is also the case that this English using minority includes the most significant players in the vital spheres of national activity such as politics, civil administration, justice, education, trade, science and technology, and diplomacy.

The importance of English in these contexts need hardly be reiterated. In the modern world there is an inevitable global dimension to everything. We need to connect to the rest of the world. As far as we Sri Lankans are concerned, the most convenient and effective link for effecting this connection is the English language. How indispensable English is for communication within the country is a debatable subject, though its complementary role within the domestic context cannot be questioned. As for the international and educational dimensions of English, these are beyond all dispute.

The true relevance of English to us is as a window on the world. In the all important global information culture of today, it would be suicidal, especially for a small country like ours, to be without the umbilical cord of a world language like English, at least as long as English retains its predominant position on the world stage, which, however, is being threatened today. It is in fact a fortunate circumstance that the international link happens to be English in our case, for among all world languages it currently commands the widest reach among nations, comprehends the furthest limits of the ever expanding horizons of the sum total of human knowledge, and enjoys the greatest prestige.

The question of mutual comprehensibility between Sri Lankan English and the English out there is of paramount importance. For me, as I think it is for many others who try to identify a model of ‘correct’ English, the English out there which seems to cut across all regional variations is represented by the kind of English that we hear on the international radio and television channels such as the BBC, the Voice America, and the CNN, or the English that we read in international print media and literature including the Internet, originating from sources all over the world. However, I cannot be so categorical about this. In the past , print media and printed literature in general encouraged the development of standard forms of languages. With broadcasting and computer-generated communication becoming more important than print in the recent decades, the establishment of centralized standards is less likely. Yet, there are at the present time no indications of a completely babelized fragmentation of English into different tongues. In fact, there appears to be a movement towards a kind of uniformity in the form of a ‘core’ English used across the world in print as well as in broadcasting.



This global variety of English is basically a result of the convergence of American and British English, a process that was acknowledged by scholars at least forty-five years ago. It was claimed in the course of a radio series jointly produced by the BBC and the Voice of America in 1964 on the British and American variants of the language, in which Britain was represented by Professor Randolph Quirk of University College London, and the US by Professor Albert H. Marckwardt Of Princeton University, that the two varieties of English had never been so different as people had imagined, and that the dominant tendency, for several decades by then, had clearly been that of convergence and even greater similarity. Today it looks as if the two forms of English provide a composite standard of correctness by reference to which other regional varieties of English can counter the centrifugal forces that threaten a break up of the language into mutually unintelligible independent tongues.

Among all standard Englishes this one is the least marked by particular regionalisms; or we might say that it consists of a relatively stable core English overlaid with a balanced mix of regional characteristics; it by no means represents an unvarying single accent, it is probably in its grammar and vocabulary that it remains generally consistent throughout the world; the absolute dominance of RP or BBC English is a thing of the past. News readers on all dominant radio and TV channels are from a variety of English speaking nations including native British and Americans with their distinctive native accents. International English language publications of whatever provenance offer no significant challenge where intelligibility is concerned. The differences between the global variety and any other regional variety of English are far fewer than those between any two of the other national standards. Therefore this ‘supranational’ model enjoys the highest degree of mutual intelligibility with all the other standard dialects.

In diachronic terms (i.e. from the point of view of the historical development of a language) the global variety is the most authentic and direct descendant or close relative of the original or the so-called ‘pure’ English, and is the surest pointer to the rare treasure-house of past knowledge and culture recorded in its literature. It will also remain the mighty centripetal force which will confer on all standard regional forms of English a common identity as English.

A natural conclusion from this would be that, to maintain its identity as English, Sri Lankan English (or any other form of English for that matter) cannot deviate too much from what is (implicitly at least) accepted as global English. When people talk about ‘pure’ English today they seem actually to mean this rather formal supranational variety of English. British and American English do not any longer exist as separate entities in a global sense, though one may refer to the English that is spoken in the British Isles as British, and the English spoken by Americans as American, dialects; but that is an insular matter; the distinctive features that still characterize the two major national forms of English in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary especially in domestic use are never so great as to even minimally affect their mutual comprehensibility and supportiveness. It is a mix of these with features from other local forms of English that we encounter globally.

The importance of any given standard form of English out of the many standard Englishes recognized today depends primarily on the demographic size of its users (that is, the number of users of that variety of English), the magnitude of its contribution to general communication, and the intensity of its usefulness as a linguistic medium of the world’s collective scientific, technological, cultural, business, and information fields . In this respect, perhaps ‘Sri Lankan English’ cannot boast of too much.

In my opinion, if Sri Lankans have something to offer to the world through their brand of English, it must be identical with the global variety of English delineated above as nearly as possible. It must do so in order to fulfill its function as the second language that connects Sri Lankans to the outside world. Any insistence on too insular a variety of English will defeat this purpose.


The section of the community of users of English that do make a contribution to the two-way traffic of knowledge and culture between Sri Lanka and the outside world, and in other vital spheres such as diplomacy, trade, and science and technology, naturally do so through the medium of an educated variety of English (in other words, a standard form of the language that is internationally accepted). I can’t imagine that this variety could be one too heavily marked by what would be regarded as distinctively Sri Lankan features such as grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary peculiarities that are intelligible only to other Sri Lankans. What I have observed in actual practice is that for effective communication to be achieved the communicators are obliged to use an English as regionally unmarked as possible; and this is none other than the ‘supranational’ model of English referred to above.


The recent UN emergency session on Sri Lanka at Geneva provided an international context of utmost importance for the country where the communicative powers of the representatives of Sri Lanka, especially Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, and Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka, played a vital role in achieving a resounding diplomatic victory. They most probably ‘sounded’ like Sri Lankan only in their accent, and in little else language-wise when they expressed themselves in English. Dr Jayatilleka’s ‘30-minute harangue against Western “colonizers”’, (as unwatch.org referred to it, according to its news item reproduced on page 4 of The Island of 26th May 2009) delivered just before the crucial vote, no doubt, ensured the eventual pro-Sri Lanka outcome. Ms. Berset, the Swiss representative, though belonging to the hostile Western bloc on this occasion, thanked the Sri Lankan ambassador for his “eloquence” (though it could have been a backhanded compliment in view of the substance of the “harangue”). This is evidence that our man in Geneva was able to communicate his ideas and feelings clearly. Had he used a heavily marked Sri Lankan English his ‘reach’ would have been circumscribed. Who won’t appreciate his terse and telling response in ‘pure’ English to Navanetha Pillay when she ‘welcomed’ the UN special session (which, fortunately for Sri Lanka, failed to lead to the fulfillment of her expectations) without referring to its final outcome? Or consider the transcript of the BBC HARDtalk interview with Mr Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, broadcast on March 3 and 4, 2009 published on pages 20 to 23 of the May 2009 issue of the Sri Lankan business magazine ‘BUSINESS TODAY’. But for the subject dealt with, and perhaps his accent, and a few idiomatically ‘Sri Lankan’ turns of phrase, the English of Minister Samarasinghe’s eloquent responses to the interviewer’s queries would have hardly revealed his Sri Lankan nationality.

The status of Sri Lankan English as a medium of literary creation among local writers is a different matter altogether, where other parameters apply, and where perhaps a certain level of ‘linguistic hybridity’ is to be expected.


Sources consulted in addition to those mentioned in the body of the text of this essay:

Baugh, Albert C. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge, 1993
& Cable, Thomas.

Barber, Charles. The English Language – A Historical Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1999

Lyons, John. Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 2003


Rohana R. Wasala