Abstract:
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.
