Symposia & Conferences
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Item The Contrast between Jaffna Tamil and Upcountry Tamil: A Dialectological Study.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Yasmini, P.The scientific study of dialects is known as dialectology, which is generally regarded as a subfield of sociolinguistics. Tamil, which belongs to the Dravidian language family, is one of the major languages spoken in Sri Lanka. As Tamil is a diglossic language, it constitutes two complementary varieties: the literary and the colloquial. The latter has a variety of dialects both regional and social. The aim of this research is to identify the contrast between regional dialects of Tamil. The Jaffna Tamil dialect is a Tamil dialect that is native to the Jaffna peninsula and it is the primary dialect used in the entire north province of Sri Lanka. The upcountry Tamil dialect is another Tamil dialect, which is native to the central province and Uva province. In this paper, the Jaffna dialect of Tamil is compared with the upcountry dialect of Tamil with emphasis on different linguistic features. A contrastive study and descriptive analysis was conducted to identify the differences and similarities between Jaffna Tamil dialect and upcountry Tamil dialect. The primary data were collected through participatory observation and the secondary data for this study were obtained from related books, journal articles, conference proceedings and websites. Jaffna Tamil dialect is largely distinct from the Upcountry Tamil dialects of Sri Lanka. Accordingly, a number of similarities and dissimilarities in phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Jaffna Tamil and Upcountry Tamil dialects have been identified.Item Gendered Language: A Review of Available Literature.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Pathirana, U. P. N. N.The most significant difference between human beings is the gender difference. Therefore, people of different genders will have their own gender characteristics, which leads to the gender differences in language. This study is an examination of influence of gender on language. The paper has been carried out as a literature review with the support of available literature, observations, informal conversations with laymen and opinions on scholars in the field of linguistics. The paper intends to investigate the gendered aspect of the language in relation to phonology, morphology and vocabulary, syntax and semantics and pragmatics. The study further seeks to discuss assumptions on nature of language that men and women use, supremacy in patterns of language use, and sexism exist within different languages. The latter part of the paper is dedicated to confer progressive language policies to address existing language issues at a point of time where huge socio-cultural and political changes is happening in outer world in relation to women‟s lives which is generally considered second or weaker sex. The study concludes proposing that language should be more people-oriented than relying on gender differences, minimizing discrimination of individuals‟ language rights.Item Social discrimination through language: A study on the discriminative usage of Sinhala(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Premaratna, C.D.H.M.Language is a medium of human communication and it is used for different purposes. One of them is discrimination. Language discrimination refers to an unfair treatment through language found in any society. This may be categorized into several concepts such as ethnic discrimination, political discrimination, religious discrimination or environmental discrimination. It is manipulated in the style of speech, such as accent, lexicon or syntax, used by an individual and does not include discrimination based on individual’s appearance. This situation can be seen in all human languages. Sri Lanka is a multilingual (Sinhala, Tamil, English), multiethnic (Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim), and multi-religions (Buddhist, Hindus, Slam) country. Sri Lanka was also governed by the European (Portuguese, Dutch, English) rulers since 17 th century to middle of the 20 th century. As a result of that Sinhalese culture has undergone many changes. This social environment is reflected on Discriminative lexicon of Sinhala language. The aim of this study is to examine the present condition of the Sinhala Discriminative Lexicon and to see how that affects society, culture environment and politics. This problem is examined under the sociolinguistic theory and data have been collected through the day today conversation of the Sinhala speakers. It is found that Sinhala speakers use discriminative language referring to some social groups or individuals in different contexts.