book review. ijsl. sipra mukherjee

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DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2013-0019 IJSL 2013; 220: 173 – 177

Book Review

Charting a new terrain

Joshua A. Fishman and Tope Omoniyi. Explorations in the sociology of language

and religion. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006.

History tells us religion and language are linked in diverse and numerous ways in

diverse and innumerable communities. Yet the sociologies o language and o re-

ligion have remained largely separate in scholarly research, and been studied as

such by scholars o both areas. Explorations brings together these two hitherto

distinct theoretical traditions o the sociology o language and that o religion to

produce the rst text that addresses a sociology o language and religion. A col-

laboration between Joshua Fishman and Tope Omoniyi, the book explores possi-

ble theoretical rameworks or interdisciplinary research into the ascinating and

rich interace o these two disciplines.

The editors argue that there are themes common to these two social systems

and a sociology that deals with both would be better equipped to construct “new

methodologies and theoretical paradigms appropriate or the interace” (p. 3) o

these disciplines. While earlier studies have recognized that the element o reli-gion may be inescapable in understanding the spread o a language, or the ele-

ment o language undeniable in the spread o a religion, a study o a sociology o

language and religion would illuminate the close interconnections between these

elds which have emerged as strong identities in the contemporary world.

The essays included in the book are diverse and cover a wide geographical

territory. The earlier classication o the area (by Sawyer and Simpson [2001])

had been thus: religions with their associated languages, sacred texts and trans-

lations, specic religious languages and scripts, special language uses such as

blasphemy or hymn, belies about language, and religiously initiated study o

language. The two editors in Explorations adopt a looser structure suggested by

Bernard Spolsky (2003). The essays are divided into three main groups: eects o

language on religion, eects o religion on language and the mutuality o lan-

guage and religion. A ourth group ocuses on literacy, acknowledging the inti-

mate connection that literacy has had with both religion and language through-

out history. Such a division, by dierentiating the groups not on the basis o a

xed characteristic, such as its sacredness or association, but on the dynamic

characteristic o relationship between religion and language, eectively allowsgreater scope or interpretation o its primary materials.

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174 Book review IJSL 220 (2013)

Fishman, credited with being the ounder-ather o the sociology o language,

and Omoniyi, a sociolinguist, approach the problem o setting up a scaolding

or this new subject rom their own subjects. Fishman sets out a decalogue o

theoretical perspectives that delineate the ways in which religion and languageinteract with each other. With illustrations drawn rom his wide research and ex-

perience in the phenomena o language in societies, these observations are sug-

gested as hypotheses with which the new discipline may be approached or study.

I the starting point o the sociology o language and religion was theo-linguistics,

this decalogue o possible paradigms widens the study to the more complex and

dynamic aspects o a socio-culture. Framed as possible principles which can illu-

minate the dynamics between language and religion when they relate to each

other, the decalogue addresses the characteristics o languages o religion, varia-

tions between languages/dialects o the religious and secular kind, sanctity ac-

quired by vernaculars when associated or not associated with religion, degrees o

stability acquired by linguistic varieties linked with religion, the power o sancti-

ed languages in resisting or encouraging modernization and ways in which reli-

gious and linguistic varieties converge, co-exist, and inuence each other. Such

an attempt to give a theoretical ramework to this new discipline will need to be

ollowed up by studies that use these propositions so as to arm or challenge

them, to ascertain or question the assumptions underlying them, and to modiy

or supplement them with empirical support.The group o essays that deal with the eect o religion upon language span

both religious language and secular language. The essay by Gregory Meyjes dis-

cusses the Bahá’í ideological ocus on the oneness o mankind and its commit-

ment to cultural diversity. This inspires their idea o a United Auxiliary Language

even as it supports rights o all linguistic groups, minorities or otherwise. Tinatin

Bolkvadze’s essay explores how the Eastern Christian tradition o considering all

languages equal beore God helped the vernaculars to achieve recognition

through a struggle which transormed the linguistic struggle into a struggle or

national cultures and national rights. Hans-Georg Wol’s essay uses computer-

ized corpora o data to show how religion helps retain the sub-Saharan Arican-

ness o West Arican English, preventing it rom becoming culturally Western-

ized. A particularly rich essay in this section is by Oladipo Salami on Yoruba

Pentecostal community. He gives an intricate exploration o petition prayers and

investigates how the Yoruba people exploit language to create a God who harmo-

nizes with their culture and their religious history. Revealing a dierent aspect o

religion and language, Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu’s essay argues that religion

plays a signicant role in resisting the spread o English in South Arica. KevinMcCarron’s essay on the secularization o religious language by the Alcoholics

Anonymous explores how the boundaries between religious spiritualism and sec-






Book review IJSL 220 (2013) 175

ular spiritualism can be blurred through imprecisions in language. With secular-

ism becoming an increasingly powerul concept in many parts o the world, the

acceptability o the secular-religion concept in modern times becomes signi-

cant. Jurgita Dzialtuvaite’s essay is on the Lithuanian immigrant community’sabsorption into Scotland ocuses on how religion aects the maintenance o lan-

guage.

The second group o essays is on the mutuality o language and religion and

depicts the correspondences in the dynamics o these two. This section begins

with Omoniyi’s essay on “Societal multilingualism and multiaithism” which

posits clear parallels between religious communities and linguistic communities.

Omoniyi suggests using multilingualism and multiaithism as core concepts in

mapping the territory o the new discipline. Arguing that similar social phenom-

ena trigger, or are triggered by, diversity in societies that are multilinguistic and

multireligious, he proposes studying multilingualism and diglossia in conjunc-

tion with multiaithism and diaithia to understand how religion and language

situate themselves in relation to the community and the state. Rajeshwari V.

Pandharipande’s essay explores the ascinatingly plural multi-religious and

multi-lingual communities o South Asia. She discusses “the ideology o hetero-

glossia” (p. 154) as a consequence o modernization and the concept o composite

identities in this plural environment. Her essay charts the changing equations

between linguistic orms and aiths and demonstrates how power hierarchy andideology o both religion and language play a role in determining the choice o

language. John E. Joseph’s essay deals with the shifing role o languages in the

identity construction o Lebanese Christian and Muslims. The changing relations

between the many religious and linguistic communities are set against the chang-

ing history to study the choice o language. Muhammad Amara’s essay asks what

the eect has been on the language repertoire o Bethlehem with the migration,

afer a century o emigration o Christians and immigration o Muslims. Anya

Woods’s essay examines the role o language in ethnic churches in the greatly

diverse population o Melbourne. Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew studies the privileging

o the powerul world languages within the cosmopolitan city-state o Singapore

and the consequent decline in the religious and cultural practices o Chinese and

Malay lie in relation to this language-shif. Thus though ocial policies support

cultural diversity, the imposition o English and Mandarin has meant the dwin-

dling o Taoism and its related dialects. All the essays in this section deal with

areas that are, or were, multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-religious, and there-

ore complement Omoniyi’s theory about the link between multireligious and

multilingual communities.The third section includes our case studies o language having an inuence

on religion. Ghil‘ad Zuckerman’s “ ‘Etymythological othering’ and the power o






176 Book review IJSL 220 (2013)

‘lexical engineering’ in Judaism, Islam and Christianity” draws on studies o Jew-

ish languages to reveal how lexical coinages and borrowings are used by commu-

nities to construct their own identities and other those they are hostile to. Robert

Carrasco and Florencia Riegelhaupt discuss a project in which elements o indig-enous American science were integrated into the school science curriculum. This

reveals how the very concepts o science and religion are built into, or kept out o,

the perceived ideologies o certain languages. The essay makes a strong case or

the need o “collaboration and trust” (p. 271) between schools and the communi-

ties they serve. Piotr P. Chruszcezewski’s and Annabelle Mooney’s essays deal

with religious discourse and its role in the construction o identity. The rst au-

thor presents certain orms o Jewish religious discourse which he claims play a

decisive role in the integration o the community. However, the vast number o

Jews as well as the multilinguistic and multiracial eatures o this community

would possibly need a more detailed and rigorous study to establish such a claim.

The second essay by Mooney, “Maligned and misunderstood”, oers an intrigu-

ing study o the language o marginal religious groups. She examines how their

language “underpins epistemic concerns, and . . . thereby underpins action” (p.

292) both o which are in conict with mainstream law which, like yet another

religious group, has its own discourse and is embedded with its particular ideol-

ogy.

The nal two essays on literacy and religion deal with liturgical literacy andwith the Shamanic literacy. Andrey Rosowsky’s essay demonstrates the continu-

ing power o the classical Quranic Arabic in the domain o liturgical literacy

against the literacy practices o the vernaculars o these UK Muslim communities.

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza gives us an excellent essay on the Shamanic lit-

eracy o the Kashinawá Indians in the western Amazon area. He brings to the

discussion the dierences o perception regarding the written book, visions, con-

version, diversity, preservation, writing and religion, which highlight the care

that needs to be undertaken by “outsider” researchers, however well-meaning,

into this area.

The majority o the essays in the volume are well-researched and well-

grounded in empirical data. The essays both complement and supplement the

propositions laid out by Fishman and Omoniyi as ways o approaching the study

o the sociology o language and religion. With linguistic and religious identity

growing increasingly powerul in the modern world, one hopes a study o these

two social systems taken together will oster better understanding o these

identity-makers.






Book review IJSL 220 (2013) 177

References

Sawyer, John F. A. & J. M. Y. Simpson (eds.). 2001. Concise encyclopaedia of language and

religion. Amsterdam: ElsevierSpolsky, Bernard. 2003. Religion as a site of language contact. Annual Review of Applied

Linguistics 23. 81–94.

Sipra Mukherjee, West Bengal State University, India, e-mail: mukherjeesipra

@gmail.com




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