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.
