Languages and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries.
The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visu...
| Publicado en: | Nationalism & Ethnic Politics Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 75 - 103 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Summer2003
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=12343683&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 12343683 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13537113 IYA jtl: Nationalism & Ethnic Politics issn: 13537113 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2003 vid: 9 iid: 2 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 12343683 10.1080/13537110412331301425 ppf: 75 ppct: 28 formats: tig: atl: Languages and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries. aug: au: Roberts, Michael affil: University of Adelaide su: Portugal Vocabulary Group identity Anthropological linguistics Social structure Sinhalese (Sri Lankan people) sug: subj: Vocabulary Group identity Anthropological linguistics Social structure Portugal Sinhalese (Sri Lankan people) ab: The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visual-iconic and written forms of cultural transmission that pre-dated print technology, while drawing attention to the relative uniformity of the Sinhala language in both geographical and temporal scale. A semantic pattern of political alliances based on the opposition of inside to outside which works contextually like a nestling Chinese-box is one dimension of this linguistic order. This supported the tendency of Sinhalese representations to adopt an associational logic which merged past enemies (the wicked Tamils) with contemporary enemies (the Portuguese, the English) during the liberation struggles of the Kandyan state and its militia in the pre-1818 period. Such tendencies and the continuation of disparaging epithets coined during the period of Portuguese imperial intrusion into the vocabulary of the twentieth century must inform any theoretical efforts to distinguish the collective consciousness of the Sinhalese after the substantial transformations initiated under the British from that which is expressed so powerfully in the war poems of the pre-British period. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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