A Linguistic Analysis on Deixis of Catholic Religious Functions in Sri Lanka

Abstract

"Deixis" are the words or phrases such as this, that, these, those, now, and then that point to time, place or situations in which a speaker is speaking. There are many deixis used in Sinhalese speaking society in Sri Lanka. Meanings of these can be traced directly to features of the act of utterance, when and where it takes place and who is involved as speaker and as addressee. So this research is a linguistic analysis of deixis used in Catholic Religious functions in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese speakers belong to different religious groups and Roman Catholic group is one of them. Roman Catholic religion is one of the largest Christian groups in the world with more than one billion adherents. So this research aims to identify the deixis used in Roman Catholic Religious functions in Sri Lanka and how meaningful they are in each environment. Data were collected from Catholic functions, Clergy and Catholic books. Data were analysed depending on categories as personal references, place references and time references. These terms of deixis refer to expressions where interpretation is relative to the extra linguistic context of the utterances such as who is speaking, the time or place of speaking, the gestures of the speaker or the current location in the discourse. Finally, it was expected that the findings of this research will support the development of deixis in the Sinhalese language in Sri Lanka.