Politics of language and why it matters in commercial stories

When Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected President of Sri Lanka in 2024, an uproar arose among the English-speaking people—particularly the Colombo elite—over his speaking only in Sinhala, supported by translators for Tamil and English. Many in the English-speaking urban upper class perceived this as a lack of sophistication and an inability to navigate global diplomacy. Social media buzzed with ridicule, labelling it a sign of provinciality. I found this critique exposing deep-seated identity insecurities in our postcolonial society and oversimplifying the interplay between language, identity, and influence. The choice of language, whether by a head of state or a business, influences the ‘brand’ of the country or the company. In the new Sri Lankan President’s case, his language choice creates room for a reassertion of identity and even suggests a recalibration of social classes. Similarly, in the case of a business, language choices create room to reach specific audiences and assert origins, backgrounds, and even values. Let’s look at how the politics of language reflects power dynamics, fosters identity, and shapes business narratives, especially in multilingual societies and markets.

Language is not just a medium of communication; it’s a vessel of identity and a tool of influence

Among Sinhala speakers, the English language is informally referred to as ‘kaduwa’, meaning sword. It reflects how English is seen as a language that can easily lend an advantage, or even a weapon that can silence an opponent.

Postcolonial societies like Sri Lanka have inherited the hierarchy of colonial language systems with some becoming synonymous with opportunity, and sadly, ‘class’. English, in particular, often serves as a marker of education and privilege, creating a rift between urban elites and rural populations.

Similar dynamics can be seen in many multilingual societies around the world. In such cases, considering what a language signals beyond its words becomes especially important for businesses. When we start working with a business, our process captures the nuances of a business’ language through an initial questionnaire where the level of formality and placement in terms of local and international, insider, and outsider perspectives are explored.

The use of a native language can project authenticity and signal a strong identity. The use of a lingua franca like English can enhance global accessibility, and cross-cultural communication, and signal a readiness to engage internationally.

Using local languages with a lingua franca

Incorporating vernacular idioms or cultural references in stories enhances connection and loyalty. Tourism businesses notably rely on English to appeal to international audiences. However, to position themselves as ‘insiders,’ they can incorporate local languages quite effectively. This approach works specifically well for appealing to travellers looking for authentic, non-touristy experiences.

We connected with Sri Lankan comic art legend Bandula Harischandra to recreate some of his frames containing interesting Sinhala phrases and words as screen-printed stories. These visual stories became instantly popular with hotels and resorts that wanted to emphasize their ‘insider nature’ to travellers. While these businesses exclusively communicated in English considering their international audience, peppering in these visual stories within rooms, bathrooms, bars and restaurants allowed them to signify how they’re connected to local culture. Several years later, these stories remain among the most popular purchases by hospitality businesses. Their strength is the ability to portray glimpses into local languages and culture only through the colloquial phrases and everyday sound expressions contained in these stories.

The use of local languages with a bridge language like English can also create a strong case for representation and respect. In 2024, when a party was promoted in a popular tourist town saying ‘Face control: whites only’ it caused a major uproar. The party was cancelled due to the severe backlash and the organizers hopefully learnt an important lesson in inclusivity and respect. The most positive outcome, in my view, was that the incident triggered wider conversations on what it means for travellers to respect local communities. Against this backdrop, the Spice Trail boutique hotel commissioned us to create a story that stresses the significance of respecting local surfers. We fine-tuned their idea into a story that came to life as a T-shirt distributed to local surfers. The story took this message of respecting locals to crowded surf breaks, where visitors often overlooked the role of resident surfers in regulating and maintaining Sri Lanka’s popular surf destinations. The story was designed predominantly in English while we relied on Sinhala and Tamil to signify how this message stems from local culture.

When monolingual narratives can do the job

Sometimes, the nature of the business restricts the language. For one of our clients developing a crypto token, English was the only choice given the market, and because standardized terminology for this relatively new sector was only available in that language.

Export-driven businesses often prioritize global languages like English or the languages of their target markets for obvious reasons. Even in these cases, consider if the company’s choice of language reflects its values. A business emphasizing authenticity to origins or local heritage can integrate the languages of origin places to reinforce such ethos.

For businesses with global ambitions like startups operating with international investors and consultants with clients from multiple countries, English is a natural choice. For a client who serves as a consultant with audiences as diverse as designers in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka, we recommended using only English despite her strong local roots in terms of origin and education.

When multilingual narratives are essential

For businesses catering to broad markets—like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, for example—embracing all major languages is non-negotiable.

Even when targeting niche markets, multilingual communication is essential when equality is a key organizational value. For instance, when a typographic collective promoting local type commissioned us to help tell their story with a manifesto, we first created the story in the bridge language English, knowing that it would be translated to Sinhala and Tamil. The tri-lingual story reinforced the brand’s values and helped to build credibility among local and international audiences.

Businesses that are community-focused, such as cooperative markets, local NGOs, or rural banking services, must engage in the languages of the region. Here, communicating in local languages isn’t just a positioning choice; it’s a necessity for trust and relatability.

Businesses catering to aspirational consumers can bank on the cultural cachet of a language. However, using languages that have little to no connection with the business will come across as inauthentic and gimmicky, to say the least. This means that if your bakery has nothing to do with France beyond making croissants, using French phrases is just a missed opportunity to share the real stories and origins of your business.

The politics of language is a play between identity, power, and connection. Whether in governance or commerce, language is a tool that can unite, divide, include or alienate. When businesses ‘read the room’ and respond to the linguistic and cultural realities of their audiences while staying true to their own, their stories will resonate better.

At the end of the day, words are not just shapes that construct meaning, but also identity, a sense of place, and even beliefs; use them well.

Same day, different story; how our New Year rituals come down to sorting and making stories

The end of the year is a reflective time for most people. But, it’s the same sun that dawns on us on the first of January. The resolutions we make at the beginning of a new year could be made on any other day. The introspective or reflective time we spend with ourselves or a close circle at the end of a year could, arguably, be more meaningful if they weren’t initiated for the social conditioning to do so. If we think about that, the new year could seem like a great commotion that interrupts the everyday flow of life, only to return to the same-same. But, the rule ‘survival of the fittest’ applies to social rituals too. There must be enough reason—even beyond the obviously commercial New Year's Eve phenomenon—for us to continue acknowledging the turn of a year the way we do.

The reason has to do with stories. More specifically, to do with sorting life stories into chapters, retelling stories through rituals, and making new ones. Across cultures, the practices of celebrating the end of a year and welcoming the new are built around our need to structure experiences through the lens of time and narrative. They help us preserve, revisit, and create stories. 

2019, palm flower, Chathuni Dewminidissa. In South Asia, the palm flower symbolises a story of family and abundance, making them part of traditional new year celebrations.

Stories are built on time

Categorizing events into beginnings, middles, and ends is the fundamental structure of any story. The calendar, with its recurring cycles, serves as one of the most enduring tools for organizing our life narratives. The end of the calendar year becomes a natural pause, a reflective juncture where the finished part of our story is examined, and the rest is imagined.

In traditional New Year rituals, this connection between time and story is more evident with stories connected to the various lunar and solar calendars, agricultural cycles and celestial rhythms. These stories become repositories of cultural memory, connecting people to their environment, ancestors, and each other through shared rituals. Even our modern New Year rituals—from going out for midnight to the mandatory social media post—reflect the global culture that dominates our lives today, like the Gregorian calendar that has minted January 1st as a shared moment of reflection and renewal around the world.

Are remembrance and celebration narrative acts?

Watching how people recount their year on social media and gravitate toward spiritual or social celebrations to mark the new year, I can’t help but notice how they all take the form of making stories and continuing or, more rarely, breaking narratives. Celebrations reaffirm shared stories with rituals and practices while creating new stories that will be retold in the years to come. Fireworks, family gatherings around, traditional festive foods, or rituals of forgiveness and gratitude all serve to bind individuals together through shared experiences. The end of a year brings about an instinct to reflect on the journey so far and assess accomplishments, challenges, and growth. This introspection usually leads to making or reaffirming stories; those countless best-of-the-year stories are evidence. 

Some deliberately break the narrative. A New Year celebration conceptualized by a Colombo collective of creatives wanted to break the hegemony of typical parties with borrowed elements from global pop culture; they wanted to create stories that are more closely linked to local habits and practices.

Rituals at the year’s turn also allow us to sort and categorize stories, dividing the sprawling continuum of existence into manageable segments—just like a writer would split a story into chapters. By marking the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, social rituals around the New Year help us frame experiences, offering clarity and perspective. They also lend an opportunity to reframe narratives; resolutions are stories we tell ourselves about how we will write the next chapter of our lives.

The universal and the particular

While the celebration of the new year is a universal phenomenon, many of the expressions are rooted in cultural particularities. The Gregorian calendar’s global adoption has established January 1st as the ‘New Year’ around the world. It’s now a shared temporal marker, coexisting with local traditions and rituals. Attend any New Year’s Eve party in Sri Lanka—all with elements from global culture like champagne and midnight counts—there will still be Kiribath served for breakfast (delicious local celebratory fare of rice cooked in coconut cream). After all, stories are not static but dynamic, capable of adapting to new contexts while retaining their essence. 

In Sri Lanka, new year celebrations are a mix of local and global narratives; people mix stories from western pop culture with those they inherited from heritage and religion. Images L to R: 2022 cocktails at Galle Face by Charles Haynes; 2016 kiribath by Antano; 2023, banana leaves, Dijaxavier. Banana leaves are a symbol of prosperity used in retail spaces at religious festivals and new years; 2016 Puja by Goutam1962, Most religious new year rituals are often built on stories of lunar and solar calendars; 2023, milk rice, Rod Waddington. Milk rice is a celebratory fare prepared across South Asia at new years, showing how foods become repositories of cultural memory; 2021 Galle Fort old church preparing for New Year's eve, Dan Arndt.

This is why I think the social ritual of marking the end of one year and the beginning of another is a narrative act, rooted in our need to retain, create, and sort stories. What was the story so far? What comes next? It reflects our desire to make sense of time, to find meaning in the past, and to shape the future. In this interplay of stories, the new year becomes more than a date on the calendar, not because it really is any different from other days; because we decided that it is so. Because, society—considering it as a single storyteller—decided that it was the end of the chapter and the start of another.

Stories bring us together (P3); Something to inspire

Hello again, and welcome to Part 3 of this special edition of Food for Thought. This is the final section of the three-part series. If you didn’t get last week’s Substack; here is the link to catch up. We will be back to our regular weekly stories next week.

As usual, comments are open; enjoy👌

Something to inspire

There’s an old Sinhalese expression “Salli deviyange malli”; meaning money is God’s little brother… It’s a common sentiment—money might not buy happiness, but it sure does solve a lot of problems. 

The thing is—money plays an essential role in our lives. We buy our water, we buy our food, we buy a bed to sleep on, we buy a house to live in, we buy transport to get around, we buy plants to grow in our garden; just about everything in our lives is purchased. And I think these transactional relationships and dependencies we created, live outside cultural identities and political divides; and I’m grateful for it. 

Sometimes people and businesses go to a great extent for money. Like changing their identity to improve their commercial prospects. A company might change the name of its product to better suit market expectations. Similarly, someone could change their surname to create a more marketable identity. 

In my field of work, this is what we call rebranding.

A brand identity is usually inherited and moulded by outside influences; cultural or societal assimilation. Similar to how people adopt a surname as part of a community; marital and family ties. Not to be confused with personality; which emerges from within and is built from experiences. The two (identity and personality) have a reciprocal relationship and change over time; some faster than others. Today I’m going to focus on identity and how it is shaped by the stories we believe.

Before 1997, this was Google's original name and logo… Seriously.

The meaning of a name can change over time; usually by the stories they become known for. Take for example a popular Sri Lankan surname like De Silva. Beyond its common indexical significance, it is rooted in colonial history. There’s also its Latin meaning; of the forest or woodland. These are story options to identify with.

The hybridity of Sri Lankan surnames appears to emphasize the cross-cultural elements of their origin stories. At one point in time, someone became a De Silva because they converted or married into a Catholic family, or mostly probably because it made life easier in a colonial society. A Catholic name provided access to government positions and titles. The branding business works in the same fashion; changing identity can be good for business…

Companies sometimes change their name or identity to better align with cultural and societal frameworks. For example, in 2020 Quaker Oats acknowledged that the identity of their Aunt Jemima products was based on a racial stereotype; 132 years later. Now they’ve rebranded the product line to Pearl Milling Company; a name that references the original mill where the pancake mix was created in 1888. The rebranding has removed the offensive elements and still points to the history of the business. 

...and just like that, it's a new story.

Origin stories give meaning to the names we use to identify. During the Spanish Inquisition, the plan was to rid the entire region of heresy and unite the empire under one orthodoxy. Whoever wasn’t killed, was inspired to convert or expelled. Hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews (Spanish Jews) adopted Catholic names to avoid persecution. Amongst them were surnames like De Silva, Pereira, Nunes, Gomes, Dias, Fernando, Cardoso, Mendes, and Pinto to name a few.

Stories can define multiple facets of an identity. In this way, they shape how we see ourselves and others in the world. When stories are capsuled into bite-size ideas, like for example on social media and news; it orchestras a particular narrative. Our devices parcel the world into a frame that leaves little room for context. Short stories are easy to share. This often has a polarizing effect by either downplaying the significance of certain aspects or sensationalizing the most shocking elements of an identity. Framing and structuring information is, essentially what storytelling comes down to. 

This person is good; this person is bad…

This approach usually works to evoke emotions, shape perceptions, and persuade an audience to make a decision. Well-crafted narratives target the affinities or fears of a particular audience. Yet, commerce seems to encourage connections that transcend boundaries created by cultural, religious and political stories.

We still import from other countries, we still order products from other cities, we still get our produce from the market, and we still need each. Twenty-first-century living requires us to foster relationships that are largely driven by economic needs rather than story alignment. Surprisingly, commerce seems to help bridge divides and underlines a fundamental element of our society; we are interconnected. Our shared interest as consumers, even if it’s economic, can lead to collaborative efforts and mutual understanding. Perhaps we are more connected through reliance than cultural myths and political stories.

Food for thought.