The promotion of Sri Lankan English Morphology through Social Media

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to establish that Sri Lankan English (SLE) is widely used on social media and in pop culture, which thereby results in the promotion and avocation of SLE Morphology among the general public. The widespread usage of the internet and social media leads to popular social media content being created in multiple languages. The internet and social media allow people to engage in creative language play, especially when expressing emotions and reactions through words. This research focuses on how this social media trend has to lead to Sinhala and English code-mixing when creating content, what aspects of SLE Morphology is prominent in such content, and how much content encourages and advocates the usage of SLE in both spoken and written content on public platforms. This study was conducted with a sample group of 50 Sri Lankan youth aged 18 to 25 years, living predominantly in Colombo. The research was based on popular social media content that is currently trending in Sri Lanka and was limited to the content of Sri Lankan origin. The sample group of 50 participants was given a questionnaire that tested their awareness of SLE and current social media trends as well as the impact such social media content has on their usage of SLE. Thereafter, four widely used social media platforms were identified, and popular text and video-based content shared on public forums were gathered over a period of two weeks. The model of morphological analysis adopted in this study is based on Senaratne‟s analysis of the morphology of Sinhalese and English code-mixing. This research showed that SLE content is popular on social media and that the youth of Sri Lanka employs SLE morphology when creating content for social media, thereby promoting SLE among the masses.