Midweek Review

Sumathy’s Ingirunthu

Published

3 years ago

2023/04/19

Sahan Weerasooriya

Repatriation,

(Here and Now):

The Malaiyaha and Memory of the World 1823-2023

“It is intensely composed. I greatly appreciated the tension and obstacles to resolution along the way. We so rarely now see films that place that kind of creative demand/opportunity on the viewer.”

Anne Blackburn (Professor of South Asian & Buddhist Studies, Cornell University, 2017).

by Laleen Jayamanne

Structure and Process

Sumathy Sivamohan’s film Ingirunthu (2012), is astutely described here by Anne Blackburn. She highlights the unusually open ways in which shots, scenes and sequences are structured, which makes it difficult to immediately categorise the film generically and neatly thematise its several concerns and scope though it’s not a ‘difficult’ film, being very watchable. As the quotation indicates, the film invites us to think freely and imaginatively about what we have seen. As a film critic/scholar, I welcome this rare opportunity to provide a critical response, attentive to the film’s ethico-aesthetic crafting of Sivamohan’s own personal engagement (as an outsider) with vital aspects of life of the Malaiyaham people of the hill-country of Lanka. The experiences of this ethnic group, originally brought from South India as indentured labour to work in the coffee and tea plantations, by the Colonial British administration of Ceylon in the early 19th Century, have never been presented in all their historical complexity and violence, on film.

They, as an ethnically marked social group, speaking Tamil, have been hidden in plain sight. Sivamohan herself, as a Jaffna Tamil and Professor of English, who translates fluently between both Tamil and English, is a performer. She is well aware of the historical differences and tensions between the Jaffna Tamils and the Malaiyaha people whose very citizenship has been the site of post-colonial political violence and struggle. Among other stark differences, the differences in accents must be a powerful sonic marker of this fraught historical legacy which I can only imagine and read about because I don’t know Tamil. Within this historical context, the title of the film about the ‘here and now’ of Malaiyaha every-day-life is also presented as ‘Sumathy’s ‘here and now’ (in the credits), meaning that the very process of making of the film was part of the film’s story, folded into its telling. It’s worth recording that Sivamohan’s crew were multi-ethnic (as they continue to be in her practice), as was the case in the robust era of popular Sinhala cinema, from 1947 into the ’60s, when many technicians, producers, directors and musicians were both Muslim and Tamil. And of course, the star of the Lankan national cinema, Daisy Daniel or Rukmani Devi, was a Tamil who spoke and sang in a perfect Sinhala accent.

Intensive Composition

Also, the specification of what Blackburn calls ‘intensive composition’ invites a sustained conceptualisation, in terms of exploring the varying moods, tones, atmosphere and competing rhetorical moves of the film. This is the rich dynamic domain of sensations, feelings and emotions, which experiences have hardly impinged on the sensibilities of the Sinhala majority nation of Lanka except when the Malaiyaha people became an electorally significant block, as was the case with the Dalit of India. But we do know, as a general fact, the essential role their labour plays in the tea industry and the economy of the nation. But this awareness has mainly been culturally capitalised as picturesque images on tourist brochures or post cards of Malaiyaha women plucking tea with a smile or as smiling romantic couples in Sinhala genre films, driving sports cars through these scenic landscapes, singing love songs. The Malaiyaha people’s every-day life, their very here and now struggles, joys and aspirations have not been of much interest to the Lankans who may have glimpsed, through mist, their inadequate layams or line-housing (dotting beautiful hill-country landscapes, carpeted with lush green tea bushes), from a train window as we rode past them on up-country holidays, while their children waved to us.

Mobile Frames

: Peter the Accordion Player

Historians and theorists of Early Cinema (1895-1907), have linked the film frame to the window frame of trains, with their similar powers of mobility, selection and focus, unlike that of the still-photographic or painterly frames. They have also pointed out that historically, trains and the cinematic apparatus are technological products of 19th Century industrial modernity. The steam train and the movie camera are siblings, mechanical apparatuses that have transformed human civilization through industrialisation of production, distribution and consumption. They have also created new speeds in transportation and made human vision and mind adjust to the mechanisation of perception through technology. Some of the earliest black and white archival photographs (of those who became the Malaiyaha folk, as they arrived in Ceylon from several South Indian regions), are of them standing on railway platforms next to trains. Several scenes of the film take place at the Radella Station while trains wind through the landscape, tooting, from time to time. Some of the landscape shots are taken through train windows. Also, a popular genre of actuality films in the silent era were shot with the two mobile frames in concert. Among the very first films screened in Paris in 1895 was one simply called Arrival of a Train at the Station (1min) by the Lumiere Brothers.

One of the most powerful sequences in Ingirunthu takes place on the railway platform and on the train, taking a ‘repatriated’ group of Malaiyaha people back on their trek to India, which their own ancestors took on perilous boats and then on foot to the hill country, to create the coffee and tea plantations by clearing jungles, which also led to the building of the train tracks for commercial transport of goods. The shots of the women seated within the train compartments, the young girls hanging out of the several windows, become emotionally charged (intensive), because we have by then come to know some of them a little in the film; who they are, their families and their daily routines. They are now the victims of the 1964 ‘Sirima-Shasthri Pact’ of repatriation of some 500,000 Malaiyaha people back to India. A printed archival document and a voice over reportage provides this information. Then we are shown these handful of people subjected to its violent decree, shifting from historical document to the story embedded in framed shots on the railway platform and within the carriages. These doubly enframed shots (camera-frame and train window-frame) encompass a vast duration, and in so doing they become truly epic-memory (non-subjective), images of historical State violence and injustice done to the Malaiyaha citizens of Ceylon. This enframing, of history and individual memory within epic-memory, is a form of ‘intensive’ composition, the individuation of abstract historical forces (State decrees, statistics), that Blackburn spoke of. The intensity (dynamism), of this silent sequence is remarkable and we also become aware of how it is created (through enframing), at the same time, which is part of its Epic, rather than Dramatic structure. We see here how the mobile framed images are saturated with both thoughts and feelings. They also give us access to a deep historical time at a global scale of colonial expansion, of industrialisation of time, while keeping the individual subjects with their own person stories and the small provisional collective also in focus. This is intensive composition of time, intimating the dynamics of several competing durations within this silent sequence of shots, an epic memory or a ‘memory of the world’. I recall here the ‘Memory of the World’ archive, which is a UNESCO instrument for the preservation of the audio-visual heritage of mankind.

Modern Time

Railway travel in the 19th Century necessitated the standardisation and synchronisation of time and the invention of watches in the West. These in turn empowered the British Imperial project in the colonies. But these epic-shots and scene on the train are at the same time also individually tragic in terms of each person’s unique life story which the industrial magic of the camera acknowledges with its enframed close-ups of faces in clusters, one woman crying silently. The handsome middle-aged grandmother, of the orphaned, now adult mute Esther Valley, who we met at the beginning of the film (keening for her dead daughter and orphaned grand-child), is foregrounded at a window in profile, in a large handsome close-up, even as the train pulls out. This sequence leaves a sharp memory trace of the group and of the women focused on by the cinematic close-up with its unique sensory values of magnification of detail. The only person who stands on the platform watching the departing train, the silent witness to this historical wrenching of people he knew, from their homes, kin and country of birth, is Peter, the man with a piano accordion with whom the film opens.

The Accordion Player as Chorus

: Grandma expatriation

Ingirunthu opens with a man (Peter) walking towards us wearing a white verti, long white shirt, a dark wool vest and a multi coloured turban. He appears to carry something strung on his shoulder which we can’t quite see. His face has a natural intensity even in repose and as he walks forward and looks up, we cut to a large banner strung across the road announcing the arrival of MG Ramachandran, popular star of Tamil South India cinema who was in fact born in Kandy, Ceylon. Popularly known as MGR, he has a huge fan base on the estate with even a statue to him sporting a pair of dark glasses and a lamp lit in his honour. As Peter turns round to look, film music swells up and we cut to a clip of MGR in an open landscape near the Himalayas singing a song about his sacred homeland (janma bhumi), earth. We are now wafted into a very popular Tamil genre film musical routine which is played out for a while which cuts to the formal meeting welcoming the star to the estate. We get the feeling that this is not going to be a documentary about the tea estates. Peter joins the jostling crowd but soon leaves and next we see him seated alone in an open landscape playing his accordion for the first time, only to be chased off by a cop because his music would interfere with the proceedings of the meeting. The appearance of a cop out of nowhere is because of the presence of the star and the excited fans, one realises. But there is a hint of an undercurrent in that odd scene of casual censorship of music in the middle of a tea estate at night.

Sivamohan speaks of her process of creating the character of Peter in the following way:

“I wrote the character of Peter because I had met Shakthivel and spoken to him. I was fascinated by him and the role he could play as a figure who cuts across time. But wanted to give him palpable social space, too, in the layam. I wanted to begin with the MGR scene and Peter attending the event. I think he said he went to see him when he came to Hatton. If I’d not met Shakthivel and not had that conversation one evening in his layam I don’t think I would have had that figure. Doubt it. He triggered a lot”.

It would certainly have been a very different film without him! We can see that this character has a liminal presence, both a person living within the community but also one who stands apart watching, not least because of the accordion he carries and plays at whim. In real life he actually played his accordion in a band. But in the film narrative it’s unclear what he does in the community for a living, which ambiguity is emphasised as he is always dressed impeccably in white and disappears after the 1983 race-based violence, leaving his accordion on a railway bench. But he returns for the funeral (of two murdered political activists), almost like a phantom presence, as he lightly walks across Esther Valley’s room where she is absorbed in a picture book. At the film’s opening Peter enters a house where her grandmother (who we later see in close-up on the deportation train), is keening at the death of her own daughter who has left an orphaned infant who is Esther Valley. Peter goes up to the hanging cloth cradle, looks at the infant and then up repeatedly as he hears a distant hymn. A cut reveals the infant’s mother’s small funeral procession winding its way through the estate. When Peter goes out and is seated with hands clasped as in prayer, the parish priest comes up to him trying to soothe him with religious platitudes about heaven. He stands up respectfully and tells the priest firmly that the child has no mother and no father here, refusing the religious consolation of a hereafter.

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Midweek Review

NPP drowning in sea of scams

Published

6 days ago

2026/04/29

Sahan Weerasooriya

Outgoing Treasury Chief Mahinda Siriwardena congratulates his successor Harshana Suriyapperuma in late June 2025 at the Finance Ministry

The Opposition is pressing for a one-day debate on USD 2.5 mn Treasury theft, which is more like a daylight robbery that had been kept under wraps by Treasury mandarins till ‘Free Lawyers’ made it public. However, the government is strongly opposed to the Opposition proposal. The Opposition is seeking consensus among

different parties to intensify the campaign against the government, struggling to cope up with a spate of controversies. Against the backdrop of the devastating debate on the coal scam, the NPP seems reluctant to face another over the theft of Treasury funds.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

USD 2.5 mn brazen heist at the Treasury several months ago and the bigwigs there obviously dragging their feet over the matter till it was brought to light recently, thanks to the Free Lawyers movement, which has dampened the NPP’s enthusiasm for May Day. The Treasury fiasco humiliated the cocky NPP leadership against the backdrop of damning report issued by the National Audit Office (NAO) that found fault with the government for awarding the coal tender for 2025/2026 period to Trident Champhar Limited of India in violation of tender procedures. The NAO emphasised that the Indian company shouldn’t have even been considered for the tender.

Even after the exposure of the scandalous handling of the coal tender, the NPP, in spite of some rumblings within the party, remained confident of overcoming the growing accusations regarding governance issues. But, the sudden revelation of the loss suffered by the Treasury, and pathetic efforts made by the NPP to suppress the truth, has caused irreparable harm to the ruling party. The arrogant NPP will have to use May Day to defend the government. Instead of preaching to the masses ad nauseum the corruption allegations against previous administrations, the NPP would have to explain such massive failures/corruption, particularly the loss of USD 2.5 mn.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of such an incident at the Treasury. The NPP will have to answer questions posed by ‘Free Lawyers,’ a civil society group that first raised the Treasury issue. On behalf of ‘Free Lawyers,’ its President Maithri Gunaratne, PC, former Governor of several provinces Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon, and Attorney-at-Law Shiral Lakthikala, targeted the government over the unprecedented Treasury heist. The Opposition, too, censured the NPP, with SJB leader Sajith Premadasa, MP, Chairman of Public Finance Committee (CoPF) Dr. Harsha de Silva, MP, and United Republican Front (URF) taking the lead.

The NPP’s excuses, based on claimed raids carried out by hacker/hackers targeting the Treasury, are untenable. The NPP’s position cannot be defended or supported against growing criticism. The coal scam and Treasury fiasco dominated social media, with the Opposition, as well as ordinary citizens, having a field day at the expense of the NPP, a political party that accused its opponents of waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement. Its successful propaganda campaigns, at the presidential and parliamentary polls, in September and November, 2024, respectively, were centered on fighting corruption.

Their anti-corruption platform appealed to the people for obvious reasons. Against the backdrop of bankruptcy, declared in May, 2022, after failing to meet debt commitments, the electorate rallied around the NPP that thrived on waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, perpetrated by previous governments. Having bagged the executive presidency in September, 2024, the NPP assured the electorate that the Parliament would be cleansed of evils at the general election. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that the people have been vested with the responsibility of cleansing the Parliament. Dissanayake went a step further when he addressed a public gathering at the 18th mile post on the Negombo-Colombo road. The NPP leader, who also leads the JVP, asserted that there was no need for an Opposition in Parliament and the House should be filled with NPPers.

Dissanayake based his assertion essentially on two failed No-Confidence Motions (NCMs) moved against Ravi Karunanayake and Keheliya Rambukwella in 2016 and 2023, respectively. The NPP/JVP leader found fault with Yahapalanaya and the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government for protecting the two wrongdoers, hence the call to cleanse Parliament.

The results of the parliamentary election proved that the electorate responded very favourably to Dissanayake’s call. Of the 225-seat Parliament, the NPP secured 159 seats, including 18 National List slots. Having accused previous governments of shielding wrongdoers, Dissanayake easily directed the NPP’s steamroller parliamentary group to defeat the NCM moved against Energy Minister Punyakumara Dissanayake (National List) on 10 April, just a few days after the NAO report exposed the coal scam.

First ex-MP as Treasury Secy.

If its own hands are clean, there is no doubt that the NPP now deeply regrets the appointment of ex-NPP National List MP Harshana Suriyapperuma as the Secretary to the Treasury and the Finance Ministry. That appointment was made in June 2025 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Mahinda Siriwardana who, along with Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, played a significant role in the country’s post-Aragalaya recovery programme.

Suriyapperuma, who had served as Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning for just seven months, before being appointed the Treasury Secretary/Finance Ministry Secretary, is under heavy fire for suppressing the truth. No less a person than CoPF Chairman Dr. de Silva publicly accused Suriyapperuma of trying to undermine his committee. The SJB has demanded Suriyapperuma’s immediate resignation. Dr. Anil Jayantha succeeded as Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning.

Those who inquired into the crisis-hit Treasury are of the belief that 53-year-old Suriyapperuma lacked the much required experience to fill the shoes of Mahinda Siriwardana. Perhaps, the breach at the Treasury could have been averted if an outsider was not brought in place of Siriwardena. The recent reportage of the incident revealed that Suriyapperuma had been aware of the breach and sought to avoid appearing before the CoPF. The NPP could have responded to the developing situation differently if an ex-MP hadn’t been entrusted with the task of steering the Treasury/Finance Ministry. To make matters worse, President Dissanayake holds the Finance portfolio.

Although the government declared that the theft of USD 2.5 mn had been reported to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after initial detection made in January this year, controversy surrounds the failure on the part of law enforcement authorities to bring it to the notice of the courts. Maithri Gunaratne, appearing in Hiru last Saturday (25), questioned why the police failed to inform the relevant Magistrate if the government lodged a complaint in that regard.

Australia has confirmed irregularities in payments owed to their government. Regardless of NPP efforts to blame it on hacker/hackers, the truth is clear. Payments have been made to an account that hadn’t been in the original agreement between the governments of Sri Lanka and Australia. That is the undeniable truth that the NPP cannot suppress by propaganda.

The NPP should be ashamed that such a fraud had been perpetrated on a country still struggling to cope up with the economic destruction caused by the UNP- and the SLFP-led governments with the help of “mission impossible” type roles played by outside interests, especially during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tenure using the JVP/Aragalaya.

The world knows how the UNP perpetrated the Treasury bond scams with the direct involvement of the then Governor of the Central Bank Arjuna Mahendran, in February 2015 and March 2016. Regardless of that intolerable scam, the UNP made a desperate attempt to retain the services of the Singaporean as the Governor of the Central Bank. Party leader and the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe demanded the re-appointment of Mahendran. That despicable move had to be dropped due to massive Opposition protests and growing public discontent over the Treasury bond scams.

The first Treasury bond scam carried out on 27 February, 2015 caused a direct loss of approximately Rs. 2 billion. On the instructions of Mahendran, the Treasury suddenly and arbitrarily changed the process of issuing Treasury Bonds. According to media reports at that time, higher interest payments, over the next 30 years, caused a further loss of around Rs. 145 billion.

Then Mahendran struck again. Caused further direct losses of more than Rs. 4 billion to the government through the fraudulent increase in interest rates as a result of the Treasury Bond issues on 27th March, 2016 ,and 29th March, 2016, in order to provide an undue advantage to connected primary dealers by indulging in further pre-meditated bond scams.

NPP on back foot

The ruling party put on a brave face with lawmakers and various others trying to play down the incident at the Treasury. Some pathetically tried to compare various accusations directed at the Rajapaksas with the incident at the Treasury which they conveniently blamed on hacker/hackers.

The NPP is facing an explosive mixture of issues. Both the coal and Treasury scams have brought immense pressure on the national economy and caused automatic deterioration. The resignation of Punyakumara aka Kumara Jayakody over the coal scam indicated that defeating the NCM moved against him was a strategic political blunder. Had the NPP asked the tainted first time Minister to step down and appoint a Presidential Commission to go into the coal scam, the NPP could have averted a major disaster. However, the Energy Minister and the Energy Secretary Udayanga Hemapala had to resign before the Parliament took up the NCM. Had the top NPP leadership bothered to peruse the executive summary of the NAO presented to Parliament on 7 April, the Party wouldn’t have tried to defend the minister.

Having championed a corruption-free political party system and then won both the presidential and parliamentary polls on that platform, the NPP executed the shocking move to move 323 containers out of the Colombo Port, in January 2025, without even any cursory checks. Those who perpetrated that operation used continuing port congestion as an excuse to clear red-flagged containers without mandatory physical checking. The NPP recently thwarted a bid by Opposition lawmakers, representing a parliamentary committee inquiring into the illegal release of containers, to summon President Dissanayake.

That committee, headed by Justice Minister Attorney-at-Law Harshana Nanayakkara, owed an explanation as to why President Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Finance Minister, shouldn’t appear before a House committee. President Dissanayake very often addresses Parliament on crucial issues. As the Minister in charge of Finance, the President should offer an explanation regarding the high profile container issue that tarnished the NPP’s image.

Three major issues in hand, namely the release of 323 containers, coal scam and theft at the Treasury, regardless of what various apologists say on mainstream and social media, have caused irrevocable damage to the party, let alone escapades involving the likes of Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne, Minister Lal Kantha, etc. The impact on the NPP can be ascertained only at an election. With the public increasingly aware of the growing accusations against it, the ruling party will do whatever possible to put off long delayed Provincial Council elections. Facing the electorate against deepening discontent among the public seems to be a frightening situation. It would be interesting to observe how a House committee, headed by Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, appointed to explore ways and means to conduct Provincial Council polls, address the issue at hand.

When compared with the three major issues, the resignation of Asoka Ranwala, as the Speaker, in December, 2024, over his failure to produce the much-touted educational qualifications, seems unnecessary. Of course, Ranwala’s case attracted tremendous public attention at that time as the public really believed the NPP wouldn’t deceive them. Ranwala’s lie shocked the public. NPP theoretician Prof. Ranjith Nirmal Dewasiri had no qualms in publicly attacking Ranwala in the wake of the NPP defending the Speaker. But, subsequent NPP actions revealed massive manipulations that shamed the first post-Aragalaya government.

Having accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of squandering as much as Rs 16 mn to join his wife Prof. Maithree in the UK in September, 2023, the NPP has ended up facing far more serious accusations. The incident at the Treasury should be sufficient for the Opposition to move NCM against the government. Of course, the NPP got the numbers in Parliament to easily defeat the NCM but the consequences would be devastating. Those who still talk of recovering the missing USD 2.5 mn must be living in a dreamland. The UNP is labelled with Treasury bond scams (2015 and 2016) and the SLPP faulted with tax cuts (2019) and sugar tax scam (2020). The NPP will have to live with the coal scam and Treasury theft. The NPP will no longer be able to parade on political platforms as paragons of virtue. It would be pertinent to mention that the Presidential Commission appointed to probe the procurement of coal, since 2009, would be able to produce a report to meet the NPP’s expectations. All indications point to that and 2026 is going to be far more challenging, both in and outside Parliament, than the previous year.

NDB fraud

Examined together, the massive fraud at the National Development Bank (NDB), perpetrated during the 2024-2026 period, and the Treasury incident, they underscore the vulnerability of the entire banking system. The 13.2 bn NDB fraud and theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury exposed the regulator, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, in respect of the NDB. The situation at the NDB cannot be examined without taking into consideration that Ernst & Young is the external auditors of the NDB and its Managing Partner Duminda Hulangamuwa functions as Senior Economic Adviser to President Dissanayake. People haven’t forgotten that Hulangamuwa had been mentioned as the possible successor of Mahinda Siriwardena before the NPP brought in Suriyapperuma. The Central Bank and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) come under the purview of the Finance Ministry now embroiled in the expanding Treasury fiasco.

The Board of Directors at the NDB consists of Sriyan Cooray (Chairman), Kelum Edirisinghe (Director / Chief Executive Officer (Executive), Bernard Sinniah (Director /Non-Independent), Sujeewa Mudalige (Director /Independent), Kushan D’Alwis (Director/Independent), Kasturi Chellaraja (Director/Independent), Shweta Pandey (Director /Independent), Hasitha Premaratne (Director/Independent), Sanjaya Mohottala (Director (Non-Independent) and Shanil Fernando Director (Independent).

The issue at hand is how such a fraud went unnoticed for a considerable period of time and whether the top management simply ignored warning signs and the failure on the part of the regulator to intervene. Those who have read Mahinda Siriwardana’s ‘Sri Lanka’s Economic Revival: Reflections on the Journey from Crisis to Recovery’ would know the circumstances leading to the 2022 economic collapse. Soft spoken Siriwardana meticulously discussed how the then Central Bank leadership as well as the so-called economic leadership of the Pohottuwa party deliberately deceived President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Siriwardena’s narrative is explosive. The book, launched before his retirement, with the participation of President Dissanayake, underscored the responsibility on the part of the political leadership and those running the banking system. Obviously Siriwardena’s work had no impact on the current dispensation as well as the top banking management.

The Opposition sees an apparent opportunity to heap pressure on the NPP as it contemplates counter measures. Their challenge is how to take remedial measures without jeopardizing the government. The IMF declaration that it is closely watching the theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury must have added pressure on the government, ripped apart by the situation at the Treasury. Let us hope the government and the Opposition reach consensus on ways and means to improve financial discipline. Overall, the Parliament cannot absolve itself of the responsibility for enactment of laws and ensuring financial discipline and the fact that Sri Lanka needs to start repayment of debt in 2028.

Midweek Review

Is language social or psychological phenomenon?

Published

6 days ago

2026/04/29

Sahan Weerasooriya

This essay was presented at The Philosophy Group of the University of London about 20 years ago. The thought provoking essay published in The Island on 22 April by Usvwatte-aratchi- Some languages confine you; some languages free you prompted me to try to get this essay published if possible. It may help the readers to further their ideas about the importance of usage of language.

Personally, I have firsthand experience in this subject. I was exposed to two different cultures and two languages. In my formative years I was brought up in a certain culture and spoke the language pertaining to that culture/language (Sinhalese -Sri Lanka). I spent all my studying and working life (55 years) using a different language in a different culture (English -England). I must mention that this was not recently. It was the early 1960’s. I can claim that I have enough knowledge and experience to justify this essay topic. In this essay I shall be investigating some of the social aspects of language with the aid of some opinions put forward by some philosophers. Then I shall be making an attempt to see what psychology has to offer before I draw my own conclusions. I am treating social aspects as part and parcel of the culture. In my view these are inseparable entities, unless one chooses to forget his or her cultural upbringing to suit a particular society.

Adoption of different culture

Socially, learning a different language and adopting a different culture is quite possible. In this case what dominates is one’s attitude or the circumstances. Attitude is psychological. I am convinced that circumstances may lead to a change of attitudes. Having said that, we must not forget that there are individuals who have not taken the trouble to learn the language of the culture in which they live. This has created a lot of socio-psychological problems in the community in which they live. It is obvious that the problem is one of communication. The main tool of communication is language. Philosophers and psychologists have spent many years investigating how language helps us to communicate and also how it may lead us to misunderstand our own fellow human beings. Understanding others (family members, members of the community in which we live, and the strangers we meet) is one of the most important aspects of living.

An awareness of the problem of language goes back to the early Greek philosophers. Parmenides gave us the first example of an argument from language to the world, saying that if we speak of a thing it must exist, since we speak of a thing at various times, it must continue to exist in a particular form. It is recently that language itself has come to be studied in a systematic way. The two landmarks in this respect were the development of Linguistics and the philosophy of language in the 20th century. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) has admitted that until he became a middle-aged man, he did not think about language per se, but regarded it as ‘transparent’. I am sure this is true with most of us although we are not of Russell’s caliber when it comes to philosophy. And one may not have to wait until one reaches one’s middle age.

Linguistics and philosophy of language

It will help us if we understand the difference between Linguistics and philosophy of Language. What linguists discover may be applied to philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology or physiology. But as a discipline of study, it remains independent of them. The philosophy of language is different. One of the modern philosophers John Searle (1932-2025) thought, by contrast to linguistics, philosophy tries to solve philosophical problems by analyzing the ordinary use, meaning and relations of words in a particular language. Searle goes on to say that language is crucial to understand human experience. In my opinion this is a very valid comment. At a very practical level we spend a lot of time sharing our experiences. Verbal communication is vital in this area. According to Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking(1936-2023) the influence of language on philosophy has been profound and almost unrecognized. He indicates, if we are not to be misled by this influence, it is necessary to become conscious of it, and to ask ourselves deliberately how far it is legitimate.

It is appropriate to bring in Ludwig Wittgenstein(1889-1951) at this point. He brought in the subject predicate theory of language. For example, if we say “John is king”. Where John is the subject and king is the predicate. Here existence requires substance. For Aristotle, forms do not exist independently of things—every form is the form of something. A “substantial” form is a kind that is attributed to a thing, without which that thing would be of a different kind or would cease to exist altogether. Wittgenstein supports Saint Augustine’s view that words are names of objects and that combinations of words have the sole function of describing reality. For example, if we point at a certain object, say a table and try to say to a child “this is a table”, the child will be confused as to what we are pointing at. Is it the colour, the tabletop or one or more of its legs This is called the ostensive definition method of teaching. Ostensive definitions lead to a variety of interpretations. The child may understand a particular case of this definition but there is no guarantee that she will be able to make a transition from one case to others like it.

Plato’s theory

J G Herder (1744-1803) pointed out the object to which we make reference may be defined by numerous different terms. How then can we justify direct, one to one correspondence-either of so many to one, or of one to so many? How are we going to deal with situations where a term describes something non-existent or only possible? Plato’s “Forms” theory cannot be applied here as anything that we can speak of already exists as a Form. Critics of this theory ask the question: “how can the world be crowded with so many imaginary objects?” We use words to describe and define. Is there any room for slang language? This comes in handy in our day to day social communication. Ostensive definition raises the questions that require a constant selection of what counts as relevant. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow, the character Old Rowley is confused as to: Does ‘pig’ refer to the quality of having a curly tail? Or standing in rows to eat? Or being pink skinned and fat? Or wearing no clothes? When we use the word “piggishness” is it something inherent to pigs, or simply, a matter of how we choose to describe them?

How can we relate the above ideas and theories of language to our daily living? Daily living is a psychosocial activity.

Perceptions

The nature of language reflects the nature of our perceptions, and these are far from straight forward. Franz Brentano (1838-1917) developed his theory of intentionality: that every mental phenomenon has a relation of direction to its object, i.e. perceptions, desires, imagination etc. are related to what is perceived, desired or imagined. I presume this can be applied to any language irrespective of the culture (our social conditioning). Say for instance the images of art and the writings are given the ability to represent objects by imposing the intentionality on the object. Thus, when we assert that we see or believe something, we impose, by convention and intention, (that is true if and only if it is the case) on the statement, and these conditions are not contained intrinsically in the sounds that make it up, but in our perception of belief about the fact. I begin to wonder how this can be applied to non-physical and unseen situations. Sometimes our feelings and attitudes are unknown to the observer. A person may shout because he is angry but you cannot see the anger, only its physical expression. We will not be able to see the prior event that has led to the anger and the utterance. This shows that there is a limit to how much is revealed simply by observing a word and its context; there is often more than that can be said.

How can we account for unexpected linguistic behaviour? This has both social and psychological implications.

For a long time behavioural theorists believed that every development of the human being was controlled by environmental and social factors. This is similar to an ostensive explanation of meaning. It implied that everything was learnt through training and association. But Noam Chomsky (b.1928) was not happy with this idea. He thought language is a complex phenomenon and which is not taught bit by bit or systematically to infants. It is successfully acquired by (almost) everybody. From my own experience it is true to say that the difficulty in learning a second language is a very different process from that experienced with the first language. Chomsky argued that the first language is not in fact learned, but rather acquired through exposure to a particular language. According to him all languages share the same basic structure, and he called this “deep structure”, which may be expressed as surface structures through a process called ‘transformation’. Chomsky’s theory helps us to assume a universal system of grammar, which may generate an infinite number of particular sentences within a language. This explains how we may create sentences within a language we have never encountered before from a limited set of grammatical rules and this appears to be a rational scientific approach.

Social or psychological phenomenon

The argument/discussion whether language is a social or a psychological phenomenon requires much more investigation than this essay warrants. I have briefly brought in various philosophers’ work, which are invaluable to this topic in terms of philosophy of language. In conclusion I am tempted to state my own experiences as a bi-lingual person. When it comes to my first language, which is Sinhalese I don’t think I learned it. I heard my parents speaking it and I picked up a few words and I constructed my own sentences and gradually became proficient by accumulating more words. Of course, the proper grammatical use of even my own language was taught in school and not by my parents. Learning my second language i.e. English took a different form. I was taught to speak, read, and write English at school and I had to work harder at this than my first language, because my English was confined to the classroom situation only, i. e. I learnt English in a non- English environment. First language came naturally and the second one I had to learn to fit into the social and the education structure that prevailed at that time. Compulsion can motivate us to learn!I had no choice but to adopt myself culturally and linguistically as a university student in England and then as a university teacher in England. Apart from the native English students, I have taught students from different countries. European, African and Asian. I had the opportunity to intermingle with them and learned various different cultural and linguistic aspects. After almost a half a century in England, I am back to my own culture (language, customs, food etc) where I was born and started my life. I am still proficient in my own language Sinhalese. No conscious effort needed.

After all the foregoing arguments and philosophy that I have put forward, my own conclusion is Chomsky’s theories are more plausible to me than other theories on this issue. It is difficult to be exact and say whether language is a social or psychological phenomenon. From the above arguments, we can see that culture and language of a given society are tightly bound. This leads us to psychological adjustments in order to fit into a society. Who can deny that even the philosophers mentioned above have not been subjected to their own cultural environment?

by Prof. Sampath
Anson Fernando
Formerly University of
The Arts London