Kinship Terms and Person Address in the English‐Speaking Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of migration, globalization and digitalization on the use of nominal address terms in the English‐speaking Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) diaspora community by undertaking a corpus analysis of English fiction authored by diaspora members with SLT heritage. In the 40 years since the outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war, more than one generation of SLTs was raised in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, and Tamil proficiency levels are diminishing with every generation. The data analysis addresses a research desideratum by offering quantitative and qualitative evidence that illustrates how variation in the use of kinship terminology in the international English‐speaking SLT diaspora reflects Tamil conventions. Thus, the younger generations of the SLT diaspora systematically address people belonging to their community who are more senior in age by using kinship terms, regardless of whether the addressee is a relative or not, which reflects their Tamil heritage.