A Comparative Study on The Influence of Sri Lankan English on Newspaper Advertisements

Abstract

The use of English in Sri Lankan media dates back to the colonial period, especially when Colombo Journal was published in 1832. Since then, the use of English in the media has been subjected to various changes, especially with the evolution of the English language used in Sri Lanka. Thus, one can find different features of Sri Lankan English in newspapers, even in the advertisements. The current study focuses on different features of Sri Lankan English in 30 newspapers. The researchers will focus on advertisements in newspapers published within a decade. In order to identify new trends of Sri Lankan English, 3 newspapers from each year that belong to the years from 2008-2018 were analysed. The results indicate that, newspaper advertisements that belong to the first half of the decade contain a standard variety of English language, whereas, contemporary newspaper advertisements contain obviously a distinct variety of English, mostly affected by Sinhala-English code mixing. It appears that, due to the influence of code mixing, new words have entered Sri Lankan English through advertisements.