A Study on Buddhistic Press under Lexical Perspective

Abstract

Language is a special signal system - a tool of thinking and communication. Through languages, people can exchange feelings, aspiration, and belief with each other. In Buddhism, language itself is the means of mission and the soul of dharma protection. The article is an empirical research on words employed in the Southern Buddhistic Press and the Northern Buddhistic Press in regard to dialect, jargon and their word origin. This article aims to clarify the similarities and differences of 2.737 dialects found in selected newspapers which are represented for geographically religious regions in Vietnam. According to the data, the Buddhism Association uses only 246 dialects whereas the Enlightenment uses 2491 dialects. In regard to jargons, both the Buddhism Association and the Enlightenment have employed a total of 7713 jargons, of which the former has 3921 cases and the latter shows 3792 cases. As regards to word origin, the results have listed a number of 4229 borrowed words originated from India, ancient Chinese, and Indo-Europe languages, accounted for 25, 2331 and 1873 respectively. Briefly, both newspapers contain certain similarities and differences in language use. This manifests the geographical distinction of Buddhism and the integration of Buddhist Press in particular and Vietnamese Buddhism in general.