Legend Series #7 - Rupeshika Gunawardana (Kelaniya University)

For our final interview in the Legend Series, we are joined by Rupeshika Gunawardana from Kelaniya University. The backstory to this interview technically began with me writing a paper in 2013, believing I could explain the diaspora of English in socioeconomic terms - this paper became “The Global Model of English” discussed in interview #2 of the podcast. This paper came to the attention of a linguistics professor in Sri Lanka, who set their students the task of investigating this paper and another academic's work, Edgar Schneider, whom I cite very often. The students, being the industrious types they were, contacted the writers of the papers for input into the investigation from the source. And nothing could be more ‘Lost in Citations’ than that kind of approach. 

As I put it in the introduction:

(0:58) Yeah, that was an interesting move, because, well, first of all, it was very flattering that your professor had decided, first of all, to use my model as something in your class, but also that he put me up against Edgar Schneider, who is obviously a much higher-level, much more highly rated researcher than I. But also, it's a smart move. It was really nice that you thought the best thing to do was, well, we'll just contact the writers.

So began my connection with Rupeshika Gunawardana and her merry band of Kelaniya academics - I say this not in jest but in exultation: imagine living a life of asking the question “why?” and then being asked “why?” by others on the same path. It was a wonder of academia in the modern age that our paths could cross.

However, it was the manner of this connection that kept Rupeshika in mind as someone who might have something to contribute to the podcast. A year or so after our first introduction, I asked if she had any work she would like to have more widely promoted. Asking academics at various stages of their careers to be part of the podcast was part of my mission from the beginning: I wanted to speak with people from undergraduates to the emeriti, and this is a mission you will see continued in the coming months with Dr. Edgar Porter joining Dr. Narahiko Inoue and Dr. Jennifer Jenkins in the catalog of interviewees who are in the ‘emeritus’ stage of their careers.

The topic of the interview was Rupeshika’s linguistic investigation of a popular YouTuber called ‘Auntie Netta.’ The reason for focusing on this medium of social networking was related to her understanding of how online content is curated:

(12:05) As an example, I'm from Sri Lanka, and if I post something on Facebook or Instagram, it does not have a wider community or wider audience and does not reach people across countries due to privacy policies and location algorithms. So YouTube is very much different from that, and mainly it's audio-visual content … YouTube makes it possible for viewers who are often geographically distant from each other, like you and I, to participate in the enjoyment of the content they watch. So in this context, I think the languages that YouTubers use to communicate with their viewers may significantly influence respect to social groups in many ways, and also the evidence that I bring out in the study is credible in that sense, because it is very much obvious. You can see that you can hear that. And the study has focused on Sri Lankan English morphological processes that can be found in those videos. Videos so that anyone who wishes to listen to how they are pronounced or how they are used in speaking are just one click away. So, more than the written discourse, I think the videos and other audiovisual data sources are much more obvious and credible in the study. That's why I chose YouTube videos.

As someone very interested in world Englishes and contextualized English language use, I found this area particularly interesting. The internet has enabled the wider dissemination of localized varieties of English than could ever have been available on radio or television. YouTube channels are an open and democratic method of finding, hearing, and investigating the global nature of English use

In this vein, the interview continued:

(26:17) I must say that even in the English language, well-known examples of blends including brunch, like breakfast and lunch, smoke and sitcom, motel, and chilax. Those are there like and in the other social media platforms, such as Instagram, is one of the new and popular social media platforms by present, and it attracts people's attention, and in this platform where users are able to communicate, where media photos and video sharing. And of course, we all know what Instagram is, and it contributes to making some new words which are related to word formation processes. 

I could go on, but I encourage you to listen to the whole interview, as it contains a great deal of analysis of what makes contextually valuable English use, while also being an operationalizable model we should all work towards for English as a lingua franca.

Go on - have a listen!