The Strategic Linguist Podcast

A note before we begin: This piece draws on both academic research and lived experience. My graduate thesis on linguistic identity in post-civil war Sri Lanka forms the foundation of this analysis. I also grew up through Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983-2009) and taught English across multiple contexts in Colombo, in private language schools, government institutions, and multinational companies.
This article focuses on specific use cases that illuminate broader patterns in language policy and AI development. It’s not intended as a comprehensive overview of the field or even the conflict, but rather as a detailed case study showing how historical patterns of linguistic exclusion can repeat themselves in new technological contexts.
In 1956, Sri Lanka made a choice that would define its post-colonial future. The Sinhala Only Act declared Sinhala the sole official language of the newly independent nation, marginalising about 18% of the population who spoke Tamil. What began as language policy evolved into systematic discrimination, fuelling ethnic tensions that exploded into a brutal civil war lasting from 1983 to 2009. 100,000s of people died, many more displaced. The economy collapsed. A nation with enormous potential became a cautionary tale about the dangers of linguistic exclusion.
Today, as artificial intelligence reshapes how humans interact with technology and each other, Sri Lanka’s history offers an urgent warning: linguistic nationalism doesn’t disappear - it adapts, and when it resurfaces in the architecture of AI systems, the consequences may be even more far-reaching than in the analog age.
Understanding Language Policy: When Politics Shapes Communication (2.47)
The People of Sri Lanka: A Shared Island (7.15)
Why Language Matters: The Theory of Linguistic Identity (8.33)
The Swabasha Movement and Post-Colonial Language Policy (10.22)
From Language Policy to Civil War (15.17)
Enter SinLLaMa: History in Digital Form (19.28)
The Pattern That Repeats (22.56)
What Multilingual AI Could Look Like (24.52)
The Global Stakes (28.00)
The Choice Ahead (30.41)
Sri Lanka’s history offers the warning. The question is whether anyone is listening.
Further reading
Canagarajah, A. S. (Ed.). (2015). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Routledge.
Cooper, R. L. (1989). Language planning and social change. Cambridge University Press.
Eisenlohr , Patrick . (2006). NEIL DEVOTTA, Blowback: Linguistic nationalism, institutional decay, and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Language in Society. 35. 747 - 750. 10.1017/S0047404506260342.
Herath, Sreemali. (2015). Language policy, ethnic tensions and linguistic rights in post war Sri Lanka. Language Policy. 14. 10.1007/s10993-014-9339-6.
Kearney, Robert N. “Language and the Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka.” Asian Survey, vol. 18, no. 5, 1978, pp. 521–34. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2643464. Accessed 1 Feb. 2026.
Kloss, H. (1966). Types of multilingual communities: A discussion of ten variables. Sociological Inquiry, 36(2), 135-145.
Pennycook, A. (1998). English and the Discourses of Colonialism. New York: Routledge.
Perera, N., Khodos, I. Linguistic reconciliation in contexts of conflict: Tamil language learning in Sri Lanka. Lang Policy 24, 345–371 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-024-09716-4
Philipson, R. (1997). Realities and Myths of Linguistic Imperialism. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development , 18 (3), 238-248.
Pool, Jonathan (1979) Language planning and identity planning. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1979.20: 5-22.
Ricento, T. (2000). Historical and theoretical perspectives in language policy and planning. Journal of sociolinguistics, 4(2), 196-213.
Wickramasuriya, S. (2005). The present socio-economic-political culture & the myth of English as an access to social equality in post-colonial Sri Lanka.


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A quick note before we begin: the study of voice, accent, and identity is vast and complex, encompassing decades of research across sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and related fields. This article offers a curated exploration focused on specific use cases rather than a comprehensive audit of the field. Many important perspectives and dimensions of this topic remain beyond the scope of this piece.
Every time we speak, we communicate far more than our words. Our voices carry social information - about our background, our education, even our supposed competence. They also communicate who we are, or at least who listeners perceive us to be. Research in sociolinguistics reveals that listeners make snap judgements about speakers based on vocal characteristics like pitch, register, and accent, often within seconds of hearing someone speak. These judgements can profoundly impact professional opportunities, perceived credibility, and social mobility.
The Vocal Fry Paradox (2.28)
The Pitch Problem: High Voices and Perceived Incompetence (5.23)
The Elizabeth Holmes Case Study: Performing Authority Through Voice (9.28)
British Accents and the Prestige Paradox (11.35)
Theoretical Frameworks: Understanding the Power of Voice and Identity (17.25)
The Real-World Stakes (20.57)
Solidarity, Code-Switching, and the Complexity of Linguistic Identity (26.04)
Toward Linguistic Justice (29.39)
In the next piece in this series, we’ll examine linguistic identity in contexts of conflict and post-conflict reconstruction, exploring how language becomes a site of political struggle and identity negotiation. Later, we’ll turn to how digital communication reshapes linguistic identity and creates new forms of belonging and exclusion in online spaces.
This post includes other works from The Strategic Linguistic in power, accent and identity.



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You speak English every day. You’ve been doing it since you were a toddler. You text, you chat, you argue about the Oxford comma. So naturally, you might think:
How complicated can the study of language really be?
This assumption is the field’s biggest problem.
The Identity Crisis
The Illusion of Expertise
Seeing Systems Where Others See “Just Talk”
The Invisible Infrastructure
Why Linguistics Remains Under the Radar
What Linguistics Gives You That Other Fields Don’t
Why This Actually Matters
The Power You’re Holding


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Welcome to the first episode of Linguistics Unscripted - my little corner of Substack where I can talk about linguistics, reference my work and others that inspire me and discuss some of the important topics.
In this episode, I discuss my most read and listened to post in 2025… The Prompt Engineering Myth
What I talk about in this episode:
* Why I’m starting this audio series (shoutout to Jen Benford’s Notes on staying true to your values and what you enjoy)
* How this post relates to something I wrote back in the summer on writing skills and AI
* The importance of writing skills when it comes to prompting AI, particularly in the workplace as we move in and out of writing forms
* Why writing about AI was terrifying for me when I first started writing, and why voices like Slow AI , SheWritesAI, Code Like A Girl are crucial to allow more people to talk about AI
* What speech communities have to do with the narrative of AI on Substack
* Getting into the post - why prompting doesn’t have to be as complicated as everyone makes it out to be and why there is asymmetry built into instruction and how it blurs the lines between human-to-human and human-to-computer interaction
* Why I’m dedicating this first episode to Kanan Gill 🥰
* What’s next in this line of thinking - The Grammar of the Prompt


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DISCLAIMER: this is not intended to be an all-encompassing post on the topic of healthcare and the fertility industry. I am focusing on a few key areas and the areas of language that have made the most impact to me.
The Industry’s Linguistic Playbook
When Uncertainty Becomes Self-Blame
The Friend Who Cracked the Code: Influencer Language and the Illusion of Secrets
The Language Gap: When Medical Discourse Keeps You Subordinate
The Performance of Normal: Hiding Grief at Work
The Linguistic Confession
You’re not alone. There are some beautiful, wonderful voices out there that don’t make you feel awful so I’m including those voices that have helped quiet the noise around me - voices that don’t claim to know how you’re feeling, what you need or what you’re missing. They’re voices who know the pain and help you keep space for yourself. They’ve been harder to find:
🇬🇧 Based in the UK, we have
* Hannah Pearn’s podcast, brilliantly named Don’t Tell Me To Relax and Instagram are light, captures a vibe that I always need and has a great community - I’ve sent her podcast to a lot of people. I just wish I was in the UK to go to her acupuncture clinic.
* Helen Davenport-Peace on Substack but also has some great words-of-wisdom for Instagram that I’m eternally grateful for. I feel like she’s heard the same things and had the same reactions - I love that she’s always looking at language.
🇦🇺 Based in Australia, Katie Dunn’s Afterglow has been refreshing content on Substack. Katie started writing and building a positive community around IVF and plan A not working out. She also felt the silence of this narrative in the broader fertility landscape was/is deafening, looking for others and hardly finding any. My favourite articles of hers below:


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com