Symposia & Conferences
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Item Feminist Implications of the Instagram Content of Rupi Kaur.(International Conference on the Humanities (ICH), 2017 Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Mallawaarachchi, I.A.Rupi Kaur is a Canada-based activist, poet and a prose writer with an Indian origin whose main platform of expression is Instagram. Kaur’s artistic expressions include poetry which are often coupled with complementary illustrations, prose pieces and photographs all of which are published online. Often critiqued as a feminist poet, her pieces are concerned with the struggles and various experiences that are faced by the women of color living in the West. Moreover, her photographs speak of a female experience that ought to be taken into account. My main focus in this study is to decipher the feminist implications of the written and illustrational pieces of Kaur. In this endeavor, a textual analysis is conducted considering the content posted on Rupi Kaur’s Instagram account during a time span of twelve months as the primary source. The study employs Alice Walker’s theory on Womanism and Michel Foucault’s views on docile bodies as a theoretical foundation on which the research is based. Additionally, I also incorporate postcolonial viewpoints on exile and diasporic identity. In this study, the researcher observes the way Kaur discusses and celebrates a female experience vis-à-vis femininity, which goes beyond the stereotypical representation of femininity as an equivalent to fragility. Thus, while acknowledging the specific cultural and historical causes that resulted womanism, the study argues that her work is feminist, furthering the argument to trace womanist implications in her work. Secondarily, the study also observes Kaur’s work in relation to the content created by the other web-based activists.Item Morphological processes in the language of Facebook(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Mallawaarachchi, I.A.Social networks including Facebook®, Twitter® and Instagram® have gained popularity throughout the world and thus have emerged with distinct cultures of their own. The fact that interactions on them are done ‘virtually’ without one to one communication emphasises the significance of written medium of communication in social media. This stance is evident in the culture of Facebook where a considerable number of Sri Lankans are engaged in social networking. Online chatting, posting various updates, captioning photos and videos are done through texts, thus ‘language’ plays a key role in the communication that takes place. Therefore, a remarkable linguistic culture has emerged, with numerous ‘new words’ entering the language every day. Accordingly this study concentrates on the usage of English particularly by Sri Lankans who interact through Facebook. However, in the instances where borrowings are concerned, the influences from and upon Sinhalese are also discussed. Various social and cultural implications were taken into consideration in order to analyse the semantic changes and culture – bound expressions. The proposed study is a participant observation in which the researcher conducted the analysis while actively participating in the activities that happen on Facebook. A number of Facebook profiles of both Sri Lankan and foreign users, Facebook chats, Facebook pages that are administered by local and foreign users and the design of the website in general are thus considered the primary source whereas the literature on morphological processes and the language on the internet serves as the secondary source. The analysis of these new words exposes various morphological processes, which are compounding, initialism, acronym, semantic expansion, affixation, blending, semantic shift, functional shift and borrowing. Remarkably, existing words are employed to create new words and new meanings rather than coining entirely new words. A significant number of morphological processes attempt to shorten longer phrases and sentences.