28.3078, Diss: Talking Tamil, Talking Saivism: Language practices in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3078. Fri Jul 14 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3078, Diss: Talking Tamil, Talking Saivism: Language practices in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia

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Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2017 12:43:56
From: Nirukshi Perera [niru.perera at monash.edu]
Subject: Talking Tamil, Talking Saivism: Language practices in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia

 
Institution: Monash University 
Program: School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2017 

Author: Nirukshi M Perera

Dissertation Title: Talking Tamil, Talking Saivism: Language practices in a
Tamil Hindu temple in Australia 

Dissertation URL:  https://doi.org/10.4225/03/58ffdf87350a0

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Tamil (tam)


Dissertation Director(s):
Louisa Willoughby
Simon Musgrave

Dissertation Abstract:

The role of religion for migrants in Australia has generated much interest in
recent years. A growing area of scholarly inquiry is how religion can assist
in migrant language maintenance. This thesis looks at the interaction between
language and religion within the goal of heritage language maintenance and how
this plays out in a particular migrant religious institution and for a
particular ethnoreligious group, namely Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus. It is the
result of an 18-month ethnographic study situated in a Tamil Hindu temple in
Australia. 

The study investigates the role of the Tamil language in the temple, the types
of language practices that the second generation employ in the space, and the
relevance of the Tamil language and Hindu religion in the lives of
second-generation devotees. It provides an insight into how migrant youth
skilfully use their heritage language and English to achieve communication and
index their hybrid identifications as they grow up in Anglo-dominant,
multicultural Australia. It also highlights the important role played by the
temple in supporting these migrants.

At a macro-level, this study shows how the temple, as a religious institution,
not only provides a space for Hindu worship, but one for socialising, cultural
identification and the transmission of language, religion and culture. In Sri
Lanka the Tamil language and Hindu religion are closely linked in a Tamil
Hindu culture and this strong language-religion ideology is reflected in the
language practices of the temple. However, in the Australian setting, the
temple faces sociocultural change including an increasingly ethnically and
linguistically diverse congregation and disengagement by the second
generation. Therefore there is a tension between the extent to which the
temple remains linked to its Tamil identity and to which it must change its
policies to accommodate those who do not speak Tamil.

On the micro-level, as an insight into language practices for the second
generation, the thesis focuses on one class in the temple’s Tamil-medium
religious school. Naturalistic linguistic data collected from a small class of
teenage devotees reveals that translanguaging is the usual code for
interactions. While English is dominant in the students’ lives, practices in
the classroom show that approximately 30 per cent of their speech contains
Tamil, thus evidencing the language-religion ideology being transmitted to the
next generation. English and Tamil features perform particular but also
overlapping functions in the classroom. The students and teacher create a safe
space where they can use their individual repertoires to explore and challenge
their beliefs and positions in terms of their heritage culture and religion.
Through the analysis of selected linguistic extracts, the multicompetence,
creativity, criticality, cooperation and subversion of the students is evident
in their language use.

While pure Tamil is not necessarily used in the class, the ways in which Tamil
features are adopted to signal a connection to Tamil culture, the
ethnoreligious community and to perform a Tamil Hindu identity are highly
significant. It forms part of the picture of a group of second-generation
migrants who can practice their heritage language, religion and culture with
confidence in Australian society, and at the same time, bring their strong
proficiency in English into these expressions of heritage, identity and faith.




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