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3 - Religious language policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Bernard Spolsky
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
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Summary

Introduction

In selecting the next domain to look at, there are a number of choices. The neighborhood makes sense: the languages one chooses to greet people in the street, the language choice in local stores (see chapter 5), street signs and other public examples of language (see chapter 6), the linguistic patterning of the peer-group or gang (Labov 1973), the neighborhood and extended family networks (Milroy 1980). I choose rather to look first at the domain of religious institutions and their language management, a field in which study has been ignored in the twentieth century secularization of western academic fields.

One of the most widely noted international language management actions of the twentieth century was the decision of the Second Vatican Council to conduct mass in the vernacular rather than in the traditional Latin. The fact that Arabic is so widely spoken today is partly accounted for by the insistence of Islam that all religious services be conducted in it. Hebrew was kept alive for nearly two millennia after people stopped speaking it as a vernacular language through its continued use as a language of prayer and religious learning. In much of Africa and in other parts of the world, the current sociolinguistic situation owes a great deal to arbitrary decisions by missionaries as to which local dialects to standardize for bible translation. All of these point to the central role that religion and religious institutions play in language management.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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