A Study on the Use of Sinhala Terms to Depict the Sri Lankan Culture in the Sri Lankan English Novels; Reef by Romesh Gu- nasekera and Paduma Meets the Sunbird by Nihal De Silva

Abstract

This research study examines the manner in which Sinhala terms are used to depict the Sri Lankan culture in Sri Lankan English novels, by examining the two selected texts; Reef (1994) by Romesh Gunasekera and Paduma Meets the Sunbird (2006) by Nihal de Silva. This study attempts to investigate the research questions pertaining to what types of Sinhala terms have been used and how they have been utilised to portray the Sri Lankan culture in Sri Lankan English novels. The objectives of this research study are to identify different word categories used in the novels, and to examine the differences in the features of terminology used to emphasise the Sri Lankan culture by each author. In order to fulfil the above objectives, a qualitative research approach has been used. Moreover, the framework of the Five domains by Peter Newmark has been applied to this study to classify the terms identified from the novels under different cultural categories. Accordingly, the selected terms are examined and tabulated manually under several subtopics while analysing them with regards to their importance to the study. The findings of the study argue that the authors have used different word categories such as borrowings, calques, alien terms, hybrid compounds, and transferred terms to portray the Sri Lankan culture in literature, in addition to other features such as code mixing and the employment of direct Sinhala terms. Hence, this study concludes that when translating culture related terms into a second language, the borrowing of terms from the source language helps the reader to grasp the content of the text clearly and effectively, while enhancing the vivacity of representation of the Sri Lankan culture in literature.