Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 650

Part of Session 116: God in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Beyond the Great Tradition: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of ‘Religious Classicals’

Authors: Bennett, Brian
Submitted by: Bennett, Brian (Niagara University, United States of America)

The nexus of language and religion has become a topic of increasing sociolinguistic interest (e.g. Sawyer and Simpson 2001, Spolsky 2003, Omoniyi and Fishman 2006, Omoniyi 2010). This paper suggests that the emergent field of scholarship can benefit from greater interchange with the academic study of religion. To that end, it draws on the comparative sociology of world religions (Sharot 2001), as well as studies of Pali in contemporary Thailand (McDaniel 2011) and Church Slavonic in post-Soviet Russia (Bennett 2011), to delineate a capacious conceptual framework for the study of ‘religious classicals’ (Fishman 1991). Although the influence of such languages has long been recognized, discussions have tended to concentrate on the pillars of the ‘great tradition’ – literacy, literature, and liturgy (cf. Fishman 1972, Rosowsky 2008). While recognizing the importance of these domains, the proposed framework widens the scope to encompass the reticulated network of official and popular discourses, practices, and institutions (e.g. educational, ritual, political, artistic, magical, commercial) in which ‘religious classicals’ actually subsist.

Bennett, B. (2011) Religion and Language in Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge.

Fishman, J. (1991), Reversing Language Shift: theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages, Clevedon; Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

_____. (1972) Language in Sociocultural Change, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

McDaniel, J. (2011) The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand, New York: Columbia.

Omoniyi, T. (ed.) (2010) The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Omoniyi, T. and Fishman, J. A. (eds) (2006) Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Rosowsky, A. (2008) Heavenly Readings: liturgical literacy in a multilingual context, Bristol; Buffalo; Toronto: Multilingual Matters.

Sawyer, J. F. A. and Simpson, J. M. Y. (2001) Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion, Amsterdam; New York: Elesevier.

Sharot, S. (2001) A Comparative Sociology of World Religions: Virtuosos, Priests, and Popular Religion. New York: New York University Press.

Spolsky, B. (2003) “Religion as a Site of Language Contact,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23: 81-94.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Beyond the Great Tradition: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of ‘Religious Classicals’