Dissertation I: Introduction to Research Methodology (ENG4197)

Research Proposal 09/BA/16118

Working Title
Funny side of Sri Lankan English: A study of Sri Lankan English and humor in relation to the comic videos of Jehan Ratnatunga.

Research Problem
Is Sri Lankan English associated with humor on account of its distinctive characteristics despite many studies conducted acknowledging its recognition as a unique variety?

Research Questions*
What are the strategies utilized to generate humor? What are the linguistic devices employed to create humor? What are the diverse ways in which the audience reacts to humor? Is there a general view of Sri Lankan English as a variety that induces humor?

*The research questions will be investigated in relation to the comic videos by Jehan Ratnatunga

Background
Since this study is based on the concept of humor in language, it would be appropriate to look in to the definition of humor and its relation to language. Attardo (3) states that, even though it is preliminary in a linguistic research on humor to define the key term humor in the study, but it is impossible to definethe category of humor let alone to provide more detailed internal subdivisions. He further rejects the use of laughter as a defining criterion for humor. Chafe defines human ability of making jokes as an intrinsic attribute of Homo sapiens; it is "The essence of human understanding: the ability to interpret particular experiences as manifestations of lager encompassing systems" (9). As Raskin points out, It seems to be generally recognized that the scope and degree of mutual understanding in humor varies directly with the degree to which the participants share their social backgrounds (16).
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These views could be directly appropriated in to this study as the participants of humor created in the videos are part of the same social background. The above view is further discussed in The Language of Humor: Navajo. Cisneros, Alexanian, Begay and Goldberg state that the intersection between humor and language is rife with complex cognitive, cultural, and social variables that all work together to create a very specific sort of understanding between people. English in Sri Lanka evolved with the influence of the British English. This allowed for the claims that the English spoken in Sri Lanka was British English and any deviations from the standard (British English) should be considered errors. These views were further emphasized when English was made the language of administration in 1796. Later, many scholars identified distinctive characteristics of English in Sri Lanka for it to be recognized as a variety with a distinct flavor of its own (Pass 13). According to Fernando, Gunasekara and Parakrama (2010) English spoken in Sri Lanka went through four stages and initially, it was laughed at as being deviant and full of crass errors (10). The purpose of this study is not to claim that Sri Lankan English is laughed at for its crass errors but to investigate whether Sri Lankan English is associated with humor due to its distinctive characteristics. This dissertation will focus on Jehan Ratnatungas videos in order to determine whether Sri Lankan English is associated with humor. Jehan Ratnatunga is a comedian that became a sensation on YouTube because of the comic videos that satirically portray Sri Lankans in different situations and in various roles. One of the predominant aspects of the videos is their distinctive use of Sri Lankan English to generate humor. Interestingly, the videos have become immensely popular among Sri Lankans despite the fact that they are the satirized subject matter in the videos.

Scope
The study will identify the strategies used to generate humor in the videos by Jehan Ratnatunga. Then the numerous ways in which linguistic devices are employed in the videos to generate humor will be investigated and analyzed. The reactions to the videos by different groups of Sri Lankans will be investigated. The research will be conducted on two age groups of people who are between 15-30 years and 50 years and above. The rationale for the selection of these two age groups is to see whether there is a generational impact on reactions to the videos. The literature on humor, linguistic theories of humor and responses to humor will be reviewed. Further, the pertinent literature on studies conducted on Sri Lankan English will be reviewed. Finally the research aims to determine whether there is a perception of Sri Lankan English in its association with humor.

Aims
To identify the strategies and linguistic devices employed in creating humor. To identify different responses to the videos. To investigate whether Sri Lankan English is associated with humor.

Objectives
An analysis of how humor is generated in the videos. Findings on which aspects of Sri Lankan English are used as linguistic devices to create humor. A review of different responses to the videos and conclusions. An assessment as to whether Sri Lankan is generally perceived as humorous.

Justification
Studies have been conducted on the humor in relation to language by researchers such as Partington, Attardo and Glen. Alan Partington uses language corpora that comprise of natural language in his study on laughter-talk which investigates talk that precedes and elicits laughter. Salvatore Attardo in his book called Linguistic Theories of humor conducts an in depth research in to the theoretical framework of the concept of humor. Philip Glen in his book Laughter in Interaction discusses a social interactional approach to laughter. All of the above studies take a theoretical approach to the concept of humor and its association with language. A study that is relatively similar to the purpose of this dissertation has been done on a Southern Athabaskan language spoken in New Mexico and Arizona called Navajo. The study is called The Language of Humor: Navajo. The study consists of an analysis of linguistic features that generate humor. Various studies on attitudes with regard to Sri Lankan English have been conducted. One such is by Ryhana Raheem who conducted a study on academic with regard to their different attitudes to English in Sri Lanka. The findings of the study proved that the academics held positive views with regard to English in Sri Lanka. Further, there is documentary evidence with regard to different perceptions on Sri Lankan English expressed by academics. For example Pass claims Sri Lankan English as a form of English with a distinct flavor of its own (13). Another view is by Gunasekara who claims that the prestigious variety is the elitist variety, considered to be Standard Sri Lankan English The other variety, which used to be called non-standard Sri Lankan English is now called Not pot English spoken by those who are not very familiar with English (Gunasekara 24). This view of Sri Lankan English by Gunasekara has not elicited much positive response in the academia of linguists and scholars of Sri Lankan English. As the above evidence encompasses the existing knowledge to the area selected for this research, there exists a gap in the knowledge with regard to language and humor in the context of Sri Lanka with regard to Sri Lankan English. This dissertation will serve the purpose of filling the aforementioned gap in the knowledge in linguistics of humor in relation to Sri Lankan English.

Methodology
The main methods of data collection that will be used in this research are questionnaires, follow-up interviews and focus group discussions. Questionnaires will primarily provide quantitative data and interviews and focus group discussions will be used to collect qualitative data. The number of views per video will be used as another method of collecting quantitative data and the comments on the videos by the viewers of the videos will be another method of collecting qualitative data. A group of 40 people belonging to two age groups will be used in the research. The two age group of the respondents will be 18-30 years and 45 years and above. Each age group will consist of 20 respondents. All forty respondents are speakers of Sri Lankan English which would either be L1 or L2. Five videos will be selected each consisting of a time duration that is less than two minutes. The respondents will be shown the videos prior to the methods of data collection. A small questionnaire comprising of a maximum number of five questions will be given at the end of each video. The different strategies that generate humor and the different linguistic devices will be listed out for respondents to choose from. Space will be allocated in the questionnaire for respondents to give additional feedback on the strategies and linguistic devices employed. A number of 10 respondents with 5 respondents from each group will be used in the follow up interview process which will ask the interviewees of the different ways in which they react to the videos and the various reasons for their perception of the language in the videos to be humorous. The focus group discussions will use 6 respondents with 3 respondents from each group. The main objective of focus group will be to initiate a discussion on Sri Lankan English used in the videos and humor associated with it leading to a more general discussion on whether Sri Lankan English could be considered a variety of English that is associated with humor.

Limitations
One of the limitations of this study is that the study is limited to 40 respondents due to the fact that this project has to be constrained within the scope of an undergraduate dissertation. Another limitation to the study is that the research does not go beyond the analyses of the comic videos by Jehan Ratnatunga into other similar genres that employ Sri Lankan English to generate humor. The reason for this is the same the same as mentioned before.

Annotated Bibliography
Partington, Alan. The Linguistics of Laughter : A corpus assisted study of laughter talk. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print. This book is an investigation of laughter-talk in spontaneous running talk with the use of language corpora. When it comes to laughter-talk, the book investigates the talk that precedes and elicits laughter using examples from the corpora. The book analyses the cognitive theory of bisociation which is defined as the clash of two frames of reference in relation to laughter. Two key questions of the study are; how does the laughter-talk function and how is linguistic realization of laughter talk achieved. The study finds out how laughter-talk is utilized by participants of a group to achieve identity within the group. This text comprises an analysis of laughter in terms of Politeness theory by Brown and Levinson. The theories of positive face and negative face are explained in detail. A further study of how laughter could be associated with FTA (Face Threatening Acts) is included. The use of politeness theory to analyze laughter-talk in relation to participants and their reactions could be called an effective appropriation of sociolinguistic theories in to analyzing linguistics of humor. Further, the same chapter investigates the question: why do participants sometimes laugh at themselves? Wordplay and phraseology are discussed drawing on the concepts of delexicalization and relexicalization in the field of corpus linguistics. Further there is a discussion of the use pun in laughter-talk which questions the existence of a good pun and a bad pun. The use of pun in discourse is discussed in relation to being disruptive or its help in enhancement of an argument. Irony and sarcasm have been analyzed and discussed in terms of laughter-talk. As the study suggests it is difficult to find authentic data in relation to irony and the study engages in an analysis of controversies and disputes concerning irony due to the aforementioned reason of the absence of authentic data. The cognitive bisociative theory is resurfaced again at this point of the text with the speculation whether irony is related to cognitive bicsociative theory due to its duality that could be associated with irony.

Fernando, Siromi, Gunasekara, Manique, and Parakrama, Arjuna. Introduction. English in Sri Lanka: Ceylon English, Lankan English and Sri Lankan English. Ed. Siromi Fernando, Manique Gunasekara and Arjuna Parakrama. Colombo: SLELTA. 2010, 9-10. Print. This book is a compilation of articles on varieties of English in Sri Lanka. According to the editors, it serves the purpose of providing documentary evidence for the existence of these varieties, their history and many functions they serve. The introduction provides a substantial view of how different perceptions evolved with regard to English since the British rule and the identification of English as a distinctive variety of its own by scholars and how it has surpassed four stages to arrive at its position in contemporary Sri Lankan society. British English had a direct impact on the evolution of English in Sri Lanka. Therefore many Sri Lankans considered themselves to be speakers of British English and any deviation from the standard was considered an error that needed alteration. There existed a notion in the beginning that the correct way of speaking English was aspiring to Standard British English. The evolution of English spoken in Sri Lanka has moved through four stages. The initial stage as mentioned above was laughed at for its deviations from the norm. Second phase was when it was considered new and emergent permitted a certain space for it to develop. Third phase acknowledged Sri Lankan English as a variety but was not considered an equal to other native varieties. The fourth phase holds the view that Sri Lankan English in every way is equal to first world varieties. Many scholars such as H.A. Pass who initiated the linguistic research on Sri Lankan English with his pioneering work The English Language in Ceylon in 1948, Siromi Fernando, Manique Gunasekara and Arjuna Parakrama among many others have contributed to the documentation of different aspects of Sri Lankan English.

Raheem, Ryhana, Configuring the Mosaic: Investigating Language Use and Attitude in Sri Lanka. English in the Multilingual Environment. Ed. H. V. Ratwatte and S. Herath Colombo: SLELTA, 2006. Print. This article discusses the issues faced by Sri Lanka as a multilingual community in determining the role and status of English. Multilingual societies have to often determine the role(s), function and status of the languages that co-exist in those societies. Even if communication through language is a social function, the decisions regarding language are often made by administrative command not by the society that uses the particular languages. Determining the role and status of English in multilingual societies often serves the purposes of global requirements, more than the needs of the pertinent multilingual society. The article states that scholars have encapsulated the attitudes with regard to English with employment of two major symbols which are the two edged sword kaduwa and the other is English as a subaltern language that does not reflect the resentment evoked through the symbol of kaduwa but reflects the hegemonic potential of English as a language. A more applicable aspect of the article that serves the purpose of its appropriation with the dissertation is the study conducted on attitudes to English in Sri Lanka. The attitudes towards and perceptions of the academics with regard to English have been investigated along with other co-existing languages. This has been achieved with the use of a list of adjective that comprises of beautiful, modern, useful, logical and easy to learn. Each adjective was given a scale of 5 ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. All the findings of the study suggest positive attitudes towards English where the respondents despite what their mother tongue is, seem to associate English with all the adjectives in a more optimistic sense. In another attitudinal study of similar nature presented the finding that a relatively smaller portion of the Sinhala speakers attributed qualities such as less friendly and less strict to speakers of English in Sri Lanka.

Works Cited Attardo, Salvatore, Linguistic Theories of Humor. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. Print. Chafe, Wallace..Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1994. Print. Cisneros ,Ruth E., Alexanian, Joey, Begay, Jalon and Goldberg, Megan. The Language of Humor: Navajo. New Mexico: University of New Mexico, 1-15. Web. 03 Mar. 2013. Fernando, Siromi, Gunasekara, Manique, and Parakrama, Arjuna. Introduction English in Sri Lanka: Ceylon English, Lankan English and Sri Lankan English. Ed. Siromi Fernando, Manique Gunasekara and Arjuna Parakrama. Colombo: SLELTA. 2010, 9-10. Print. Gunasekara, Manique. The Postcolonial Identity of Sri Lankan English. Colombo: Katha Publishers. 2005. Print. Partington, Alan. The Linguistics of Laughter: A corpus assisted study of laughter talk. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print. Pass, H., A. Ceylon English English in Sri Lanka: Ceylon English, Lankan English and Sri Lankan English. Ed. Siromi Fernando, Manique Gunasekara and Arjuna Parakrama. Colombo: SLELTA. 2010, 13-29. Print. Raheem, Ryhana, Configuring the Mosaic: Investigating Language Use and Attitude in Sri Lanka. English in the Multilingual Environment. Ed. H. V. Ratwatte and S. Herath Colombo: SLELTA, 2006. Print. Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1985. Print.

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