Sri Lankan English, in my view, is the inevitable result of (British) English, introduced by our former colonial masters, trying to establish itself in Sri Lanka. When a language is introduced to a new context it shapes and redefines itself to suite the context. The survival of the language in the new context as a language of that context depends on, among other factors, the success of this adaptation. What has come to be known as Sri Lankan English indicates the success that English has achieved in becoming a language of the Sri Lankan context. Given the fact that Sri Lankan English is a variety that has emerged out of the Sri Lankan context, it is the form of English that can best capture Sri Lankan realities and what could be called the ‘Sri Lankan consciousness’.
The position that Sri Lankan English occupies among other varieties of English is decided not so much by linguistic factors as by political factors. The marginal position that the contexts associated with Sri Lankan English occupy in the broader social, political, and economic discourse explains the dominant tendency to see Sri Lankan English as a linguistically inferior variety. In such a context, academic studies have a special responsibility to foreground the notion of Sri Lankan English and make a case for that variety.