Lanna Spirit Terms: Existence and Lanna Worldviews

Abstract

Spirit terms are part of the language that shows the culture of each group of people. This article aims to analyze the existence of Lanna spirit terms and the Lanna worldviews reflected from Lanna spirit terms. The data was collected from theses and books between 1996 and 2018 and the result shows that there were 81 spirit terms. Then, the researcher created a questionnaire and a data recording form to acquire the information from the cultural office personnel of 8 northern provinces by post, 1 person per area, and the researcher interviewed 1 Lanna person in that area, for a total of 16 people. The data exhibited the existence and the worldviews reflected in Lanna spirit terms to support the hypothesis of Sapir-Whorf. The research result showed that the existence of Lanna spirit terms appeared in five contexts: stories, traditions, rituals, predictions, and plays. The terms were divided into two groups: 1) the existence of spirit terms with one characteristic which was the most common group found; and 2) the existence of spirit terms with multiple characteristics. In addition, the Lanna worldviews reflected from the spirit terms are in line with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis because the spirit terms were created by Lanna people which reflects the thought and perspective of Lanna people about the belief in spirits that is related to the way of life and the things around them. The topic was divided into six aspects : 1) spirit and religion, 2) spirit and personal status, 3) spirit and place, 4) spirit and occupation, 5) spirit and appliances, and 6) spirit and nature, the most common belief.