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 (P2): Something to understand and something to buy

This is Part 2 of our three-part edition of Food for Thought. If you didn’t read Part 1, you probably should. Here is the link to catch up. The third and final part is here. Let’s get into it…

Something to understand: 

We tend to be biased when it comes to the stories we make for ourselves or those we love. I remember in high school, my Canadian History books downplayed the exploitation and violence inflicted on the First Nations people. Those who win conflicts often have the power to shape narratives to their advantage. They usually showcase achievements, and emphasize perspectives, while potentially marginalizing or erasing others. A story’s hero and villain often depend on who’s paying the bill.  

Something to buy 

Most people don’t like to be used or manipulated; especially when it comes to marketing. When businesses try to connect with a new consumer group, they often risk missing the mark. 

The time Kendall Jenner ended racism by handing a policeman a Pepsi.

The failure of the 2017 Pepsi "Live for Now" campaign wasn’t the cringy title; it was because Pepsi was chasing a popular narrative. Jumping onto a trending narrative has the longevity of a high school popularity.  But when companies get the narrative right; they win all the business. Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign boosted sales from $2 billion to $4 billion in three years. They took an authentic approach and adopted a narrative that challenged stereotypes and beauty norms. How they told the story played a key role in their success; it was perceptive and attuned to the environment and social dynamics of their target market. As we say… “Always be selling, just don’t be an asshole about it”

…and no one even noticed that the same company that makes Dove soap, also makes Fair and Lovely; just saying.

A business can quickly gain trust or approval by association; like adopting a surname to join a community. Dove’s narrative was legitimate because it had the right consumer insights and the appropriate people telling the story. I’m emphasizing appropriateness because authenticity is hard to buy. In the same way, students leverage institutional accreditation to gain recognition and approval in their professional lives, businesses adopt narratives and use endorsements to gain appeal and trust. Legitimacy by credit.

The strategic use of narratives can add credibility to a business’s reputation. Authentic stories, while challenging to attain, become valuable when aligned with consumer insights. Some businesses will go to great lengths to achieve that level of positioning, fostering relationships and dependencies that transcend cultural and political divides. By leveraging authentic connections, businesses can create new lasting impressions and build trust, while still selling the same soda and soap they did the year before.

Food for thought…