Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces

by Andrey Rosowsky (Editor)

Overview

This volume shares the results of research conducted within and across the complex nexus of language, religion and new technologies. It identifies the dynamic and mobile ways religious practice and language interact online to modify, confirm, transform and consolidate linguistic resources and repertoires. It makes a significant contribution to work in the emerging sub-discipline of the sociology of language and religion and adds to the growing work on digital religion. It also showcases leading and ground-breaking researchers working on online and offline examples of the complex relationships evinced by the study of language and religion. The chapter authors explore a wide range of religions, technologies and languages in order to provide an innovative insight into the overlap between the study of language and religion and language and technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783099290
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	11/16/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Andrey Rosowsky is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context (Multilingual Matters, 2008).

Andrey Rosowsky is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. His publications include Aspects of Performance in Faith Settings: Heavenly Acts (ed., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019) and Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces (Multilingual Matters, 2017).

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces: An Introduction

Andrey Rosowsky

This is a challenging book. And writing its introduction is a challenging task in a number of ways. Firstly, this edited volume challenges the reader to make sense of a wide range of theory, context and data from different academic fields that, while diverse and in themselves complex, are nevertheless constrained within the nexus of faith, technology and language. Unlike some interdisciplinary work, which might lead the researcher to wherever the data takes him or her, there is here a self-imposed limitation to explore and account for specifically faith, linguistic and technological practices in their intricate and intimate relationship with one another. Such a limitation is imposed, of course, in the spirit of practicality, cohesion and realism. Any two of these areas would provide a lifetime's wealth of study for many of us. The addition of a third – which is not simply a context but a dynamic and independent academic path in itself – poses a serious challenge in coming up with coherent, meaningful and relevant insights and conclusions. It is, though, a necessary framework for making sense of this particular nexus within the complex, stochastic and fluid set of social processes which characterise the present age.

Furthermore, many of the chapters in this volume owe part of their origin to the pioneering work done by others in the field of the sociology of language and religion (SLR), a fledgling discipline which also tries to marry two very independent and historically recognised academic fields. Looking over our shoulders throughout this book, and I am sure of his presence now overlooking my computer as I write, is the sociolinguistic figure and legacy of the late Joshua Fishman (1927–2015), who throughout his life, but particularly towards the end of it, never ceased questioning the always giving connection between language and religion (Fishman & Omoniyi, 2006). More on this later.

Secondly, this book has been a challenge for its contributors and its editor, as despite the self-imposed constraints provided by our tridental focus, or because of them, a very wide range of contexts have been identified as having something important to say about the way that faith and language interrelate through technology, particularly in this case, new technologies. A point that needs to be made from the start is that our conceptualisations of language and religion are broad and multifaceted. This is justifiable from a couple of perspectives. Firstly, the collection of authors in this volume draws on a number of different, but related, fields of research, each of which approaches the study of language and/or religion from a certain direction. The second justification is the inherent difficulty in coming up with satisfactory working definitions that encompass all the research included. In respect of religion, Fishman (2006: 14) famously said 'I am not prepared to define "religion" per se, accepting that the behaviors, beliefs and values that are deigned to be religious are more diverse than any of us are currently aware of'. The most one can say about 'language' in the context of this volume, that is consistently valid and meaningful, is that all contributors, whatever their discipline, treat language as a social practice.

This volume attempts to maintain a focus as much as possible on the three discrete areas of faith, language and digital (or online) spaces. The latter phrase I use here as a catch-all term to denote online communications and interactions either via computers, handheld devices or other forms of mobile technology. All three of these areas already have their 'sociologies' albeit the latter of more recent origin than the other two. The first, religion, has antecedents reaching back to Durkheim and Weber, while the second, language, it could be argued has its origins in the work of Saussure who made the important academic distinction between language in theory (langue) and language in practice (parole), though strictly speaking, the fundamentals of the sociology of language were established in the 1960s with the work of Labov, Fishman and Hymes. Thirdly, as befitting such a rapidly changing field of inquiry, it is easier to refer to a journal rather than any one scholar for research into new technologies and communication. The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication has been at the forefront of this field for a number of years and the Journal of Sociolinguistics has had at least one issue dedicated to language and online spaces (10/4, 2006). While mentioning journals, it is also worth noting the existence of an online journal specifically focusing on online religion/religion online, the Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, which has been around since 2005 and is now into its ninth volume. The present volume, then, differs from these other approaches in seeking to submit all three of these areas, in combination, to scholarly gaze. It takes its place, therefore, within these three fields and offers a forum for their interaction and mutual effects.

The Sociology of Language and Religion

In Fishman's (2006) Decalogue, which outlines the principles underpinning any future SLR, a number of its precepts are relevant to a volume of this nature. His first precept is that a 'language (or variety) of religion always functions within a larger multilingual/multivarietal repertoire' (Fishman, 2006: 14), which speaks clearly to the findings of a number of authors here in that digital spaces, either technologically determined or, at least, influenced or shaped, encourage newer or transformed varieties of language which are thus added to a community's or individual's repertoire. Of course, evidence has to be presented that (a) such digital spaces are responsible in some way for these new or transformed varieties and (b) they are inflected to some extent with a faith dimension either missing from their offline equivalent contexts or, at least, consolidating them in some special or enhanced way. Either of these possibilities would be worth exploring within the remit of SLR.

The Decalogue's second precept also builds on the initial precept by claiming that such variation, where it occurs, takes place inter- and intra-societally. These varieties emerge on the basis of faith practices both within the same faith, broadly understood, and between faiths, equally broadly understood. For example, across a range of Christian contexts, obvious different varieties of English are spoken and performed in church practices of different denominations and even within single denominations. The same is true for other faiths and other traditions. Therefore, within a nominally monolingual and monofaith set of Christian practices, we may find a wide range of faith-inflected language varieties, vernacular and performative, such as in African American Vernacular English within churches belonging to the National Baptist Convention in the USA and in Southern White Vernacular English in many Southern Baptist churches in the same country. Similarly, the ethnolects, or ethnolinguistic repertoires, associated with many diasporas and transnational communities found in the UK have led to different spoken vernaculars in mosques, temples and gurdwaras throughout the country. A very basic and simple example would be the phonetic difference between a Muslim Londoner's 'brother', /bravv[??]/ (or /brav/), and a Muslim Yorkshireman's equivalent, /bruda/ – a Muslim term in two variants. Although there are no historical studies in this volume, such variation inter- and intra-societally, always takes place diachronically too.

Fishman's fourth precept, regarding the co-sanctification of language varieties, also plays a part in the striving for authenticity, and its converse, the rooting out of inauthenticity within language usage. Again, the global role of English in transnational settings is a site of such striving within many faith settings with an often intergenerational tension exacerbating matters around the question of whether certain languages can be used for certain purposes, or whether they are in some way 'tainted' and inappropriate because of the role they played in imperial, colonial projects of the past and the globalising present.

In a volume like this, there is no space to go through a precept-by-precept account of Fishman's Decalogue even though most, if not all, relate directly or indirectly to any discussion of the relationship between language and religion in such a charged context as 'digital spaces'. However, precept six is worth a special mention in this introduction for its direct significance to this project. This precept states that 'all sources of sociocultural change are also sources of change in the sociolinguistic repertoire vis-à-vis religion, including religious change per se' (Fishman, 2006: 18). This is perhaps the crux of the matter as far as this volume is concerned. The sociocultural changes evinced by the arrival in the latter part of the 20th century of the internet, and electronic communications more generally, are perhaps of the same magnitude and significance as history has bestowed upon the sociocultural changes resulting from the introduction of print technology and the widespread availability of mass-produced books in the period from 1440 to 1700. The ubiquity and social domination of online practices now suggest we are witnessing another moment in history when a technology may have significant and lasting impact on all aspects of social, political, cultural and economic life, including faith practices. Moreover, as faith's presence on the internet is by far the most extensive of all topics, even outstripping sex and shopping in the number of web pages devoted to it (see Rosowsky, this volume), it is unlikely that faith will not be impacted in some way. That language is also one of the aspects of social life equally vulnerable or susceptible to this technological impact, exploration of these two together constitutes a natural rich area for such exploration.

Religion and Technology

A significant branch of the research that is taking place on new technologies and society is the attention being paid to 'online religion' or 'religion online'. In the first instance, the latter distinction between online religion and religion online has been used to distinguish between two important functions of online technologies. Firstly, 'religion online' (Helland [2000] – though see Helland [2007] for a later, more nuanced, view) is a loose term denoting digital spaces where religion has a presence associated with the internet function of information giving and has the sense of a 'first port-of-call'. These were, and still are, established as information sites, such as the Vatican's website The Holy See, where visitors can go for information, texts, explanations and the like. This is characterised as a 'one-to-many' communicative orientation. Online religion (Helland, 2000), on the other hand, makes extensive use of Web 2.0 technology and its facilitation of user-generated content and interaction – what some call 'many-to-many' communicative orientation (Campbell, 2013; Helland, 2007). Initially, this was the facility to 'chat' and discuss and synchronously and asynchronously download and upload files; however, as software designers have become more adventurous, the facility to worship and pray online, go on virtual pilgrimages and interact with teachers has become more usual and widespread across many faiths.

This development has led to an interesting symbiotic relationship between online and what is now called 'offline' religious practice, with many studies seeking to explore that relationship (Campbell, 2012) and establish patterns of similarity, convergence and divergence between the two domains. A great deal of research now exists that seeks to validate the claim that online religion is, by definition, qualitatively different to 'offline' religion and that it is not merely the unproblematic transfer of a religious practice or domain from one technological mode to another. Campbell (2013) and others explore the tension, applications and developments of these online spaces and how religious practices are seen as either simulated, authentic or transformed. An early but key article focusing on this tension is the paper by O'Leary (1996) which, drawing on Ong's (1982) thesis of the link between the introduction of print technology and the Reformation, saw fit to draw a parallel between that linkage and the recent development of electronic communication and religious practice. He drew attention not only to the way 'theories and practices of language and ritual may be profoundly altered by technological change' (O'Leary, 1996: 787), but also in what ways religious communication is able to mediate the sacred. The battles fought over the role of sacred text and image during and after the Reformation may have important lessons for understanding the manner in which the sacred is mediated by electronic and digital technology. The magic efficacy of sacred recitation of the word, mentioned by Weber (2002) and Eliade (1965), in the pre-Reformation Christian era was now replaced by the preaching of the word, with text, understood now vernacularly rather than sacramentally. This was accompanied by a parallel development in the physical environment, with church ornamentation and musical performance eradicated or severely restricted. The written texts of the Christian mission were no longer important for their sacred provenance or character but for their message, expressed in vernacular translations for the first time in a major, widespread manner. O'Leary reminds us that this change is perhaps best represented by the communion ceremony. In the Catholic tradition (i.e. pre-Reform) the words of this rite, for example, 'This is My Body' are understood performatively (Austin, 1962). Once uttered by an authorised speaker (i.e. the priest) in a suitably authorised or consecrated setting, the words become 'real' or 'true'. There is a unity of word and meaning. By contrast, within Protestantism, where the ritual was retained, the words became symbolic only, with a clear emphasis on the separation of sign and signifier and the performative character of liturgical speech acts denied altogether. This is related to the accusation that much of pre-Reformation liturgy was nothing but 'vain repetitions', memorised recitations and chanting with little or no referential meaning for those taking part, particularly within the congregation. Print technology facilitated the production of vernacular translation of sacred texts and thus, many would claim, led to different conceptualisations of religion in the Christian context, and, by extension, different understandings of language. Referential meaning now came more to the fore and language in its somatic and liturgical sense was often considered nonsensical and related by some (e.g. Calvin) to 'sorcery' (O'Leary, 1996: 789).

We must anticipate that the propositional content and presentational form of religion in the electronic age will differ significantly as greatly from its contemporary incarnations as the teachings of Jesus differ from the dialectical theology of medieval Scholastics or as the Eucharistic ceremonies of the earliest Christians fifer from the Latin High Mass. (O'Leary, 1996: 793)

Ong writes about chirographic societies as those succeeding purely oral ones. Print technology in the 15th century led to the typographic society – McLuhan (1962) Gutenberg Galaxy. Electronic technology is giving us a digital society. McLuhan's proposition is that orality represented a multisensory mode of communication and interaction albeit on a physically interpersonal scale and limited to the geographically proximate. The transition to a chirographic and then typographic society reduced that multisensory mode to the unisensory mode of the visual and the sequential. Much has been claimed for this transition including the development of modernity itself. In his prescient manner, McLuhan suggested, on the evidence of film, radio and television (he was writing in the 1950s), that the visual mode of the typographic age would give way (was already giving way) to another, transformed, multisensory experience of communication and interaction. The development of electronic technologies consolidates the evidence of such a view. However, what Ong calls 'secondary orality' seems a thoroughly inadequate concept in the digital age to explain the technologically enhanced modes of communication that prevail online today. The multisensory dimension of online 'life' is a qualitatively different experience to the multisensory aspect of earlier orality. Although perhaps privileging textual practices over other practices, O'Leary reminds us of the original meaning of 'text' as something woven (from texere) together to make a coherent whole – words, graphics, images (still and moving), sound, colour and shape make for a superior and enhanced experience that allows for online religion, or online ritual, to have its own particular stamp – not just the usual asynchronicity and shrinkage of distance associated with online interactions and communications, but also the potential of developing online selves that differ from those of their offline counterparts. The collectivity of the offline experience, on the one hand, is mirrored by the functionality allowing multiple participants (synchronous and asynchronous), but, on the other hand, is rejected by the individual interacting virtually and, thus, physically alone. The idea of being 'alone in the crowd' particularly with the facility to 'lurk' in digital spaces becomes a strong metaphor for the experience of the online worshipper.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Andrey Rosowsky and the authors of individual chapters.
Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

1. Andrey Rosowsky: Faith and Language Practices In Digital Spaces: Introduction

Section 1 – Faith, Language and Social Media

2. Thor Sawin: Re-Parishing In Social Media: Identity-Based Virtual Faith Communities and Physical Parishes

3. Ana Souza: Facebook: A Medium for the Language Planning Of Migrant Churches

Section 2 – Faith, Language and Transnational Online Practices

4. L. Oladipo Salami: Ifa, the Word and the Virtual World: A Study of the Perceptions of and Attitudes Towards Ifa Religious Tradition on the Internet

5. Iyabode Deborah Akande: Globalizing Yoruba Taboos and their Socio-Cultural and Religious Value

6. Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe: Yiddish Wikipedia - History Revisited

Section 3 – Faith, Language and Online Televangelism

7. Tope Omoniyi: Digital Evangelism: Varieties of English in Unexpected Places

8. Shaimaa El Naggar: American Muslim Televangelists as Religious Celebrities: The Changing “Face” of Religious Discourse

Section 4 – Faith, Language and Online Ritual

9. Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande: Online Satsang and Online Puja: Faith and Language in the Era of Globalization

10. Andrey Rosowsky: Virtual Allegiance: Online “Baya’a” Practices Within a Worldwide Sufi Order

Section 5 - Afterword

11. Bernard Spolsky: Afterword

Editorial Reviews

The explosion of online resources will inevitably affect religion, the master emotion, as well as its handmaiden, that is, its language. In this modest but significant volume, technology, language and religion come together as a viable and potent nexus.

Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

This volume does a good job of navigating the various theoretical backgrounds involved in the discussion of language and faith online, by offering a variety of analyses of how these factors interact in different contexts and in different communities. It successfully opens the discussion of the intersection of faith and language online, which have been analyzed separately as they are performed in digital spaces. However, faith and language are often intertwined and inseparable as components of social practice. This volume provides a way forward as to how analysis can be conducted to ascertain the ways in which these factors interact with each other in digital spaces.

LINGUIST List 29.3625 - Jordan Jordan Lavender

From Muslim televangelist discourses and Brazilian Pentacostalist language ideologies on Facebook to the impact of Nigerian internet platforms on religious worship. From Christian digital parishes to online Hindu practices and Yiddish Wikipedia groups, this volume captures in fascinating detail the technological and discursive strategies of religious groups in our modern age as they reinvent their communities in cyberspace.

Christian Münch

Research in the Sociology of Language and Religion (SLR) has been gaining momentum over the past decade or so. This volume advances the discussion by focusing on computer and telephonic technologies. Students of religion and sociolinguistics alike will benefit from these skillful probes of the digital world in which we now seem to live and move and have our being.

Brian P. Bennett

From Muslim televangelist discourses and Brazilian Pentacostalist language ideologies on Facebook to the impact of Nigerian internet platforms on religious worship. From Christian digital parishes to online Hindu practices and Yiddish Wikipedia groups, this volume captures in fascinating detail the technological and discursive strategies of religious groups in our modern age as they reinvent their communities in cyberspace.

Christian Münch