Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

The Impact of Socio-Cultural Aspects on Language in a Changing
World: An analysis of modern Sinhala
Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena
Department of Modern Languages
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
The advances in technology bear an inevitable impact on the cultural values, customs
and traditions of any speech community and thus on its language. This paper analyses
some aspects of cultural values and norms reflected in modern Sinhala to ascertain
whether the changes in society in the hi-tech age have in any way affected its language.
Focussing on social hierarchies in the society, mainly on the aspect of physical and
emotional distance reflected in the language, this study will analyse the intricacies
unique to Sinhala speech community, i.e. the distance between the Buddhist monk and
layman, the Buddhist temple and village, parents, teachers, elders and the rest. The use
of specific lexical items for Buddha, Buddhist monks, places and objects of worship in a
temple, heavy use of honorifics, kinship terms and zero anaphora are evident in Spoken
Sinhala, thus demarcating the distance between each rung in the social hierarchy.
1. Introduction
With constant advancement in technology and changing times, the borders across
the world become less significant. It is inevitable that individual speech
communities are affected by these changes, thus bearing an impact on their
values, traditions, customs and norms. Disanayaka (1998:128) observes that
“culture in its simplest sense, may be viewed as a composite consisting of two
distinctive elements: the system of values and the way they are expressed in
material terms”. These values are expressed mostly through language and social
behaviour of the members of the relevant speech community. This study focuses
on socio-cultural aspects reflected in Spoken Sinhala, namely the aspect of
physical and emotional distance evident in the language. It is intended to ascertain
whether the advances in technology and globalisation have in anyway affected the
cultural values, customs and norms of a speech community, how significant the
impact is and whether the language has been affected as a result. The popular
belief is that cultural values and norms are heavily affected by the advances in
technology and influence from the west.
Sinhala, being the major language in Sri Lanka, is spoken by 74% of the
population (cf. Ch. Premawardhena 2007:213). The majority of the Sinhala
speech community being Buddhists, there is a significant influence on the