29.3625, Review: Sociolinguistics: Rosowsky (2017)

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Subject: 29.3625, Review: Sociolinguistics: Rosowsky (2017)

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Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2018 15:05:03
From: Jordan Lavender [jordan.lavender at colby.edu]
Subject: Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces

 
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EDITOR: Andrey  Rosowsky
TITLE: Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Jordan Jordan Lavender, Colby College

SUMMARY

Andrey Rosowsky’s volume, “Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces”,
contains eleven chapters, including an introduction and an afterword, that
discuss how language and faith interact in computer mediated-communication
(CMC), also digital or mobile communication (Deumert 2014). The volume is
divided into four parts, beginning with Andrey Rosowsky’s introduction, “Faith
and Language Practices in Digital Spaces: An Introduction,” which situates the
following discussion within the field of the sociology of language and
religion, pioneered by Joshua Fishman (1927-2015). Rosowsky acknowledges some
of the difficulties with the topics at hand and then sets the stage for the
following chapters by defining key terms, such as digital spaces, religion and
language, particularly distinguishing ‘religion online’ from ‘online
religion’. The volume follows in previous research on CMC in shifting from
language use to language form, particularly in rejecting a homogeneous use of
language on the Internet, and focuses on the users as the source of variation,
rather than the medium. The volume also contributes to sociolinguistics, by
showing how variation in language forms online can be influenced by other
factors, such as doctrine and philosophy, instead of other social factors,
such as age and gender. 

Part 1: Faith, Language, and Social Media, includes two chapters that focus on
language practices on Facebook. Thor Sawin’s chapter “Re-Parishing in Social
Media: Identity-Based Virtual Faith Communities and Physical Parishes”
explores how certain ‘niche’ religious identities transcend physical parish
boundaries, focusing on three such identities. Members of niche communities
benefit from both community in physical parishes and in online community in
what Sawin calls ‘virtual parishes’, which can fill the gap missing in offline
community. However, the virtual parish does not replace its offline
counterpart but exists as a supplement to it. Sawin relates the issue of
minority identities in these virtual parishes to scale (Blommaert 2010) and
posits that virtual communities become more significant if a particular
minority identity is susceptible to vulnerability from the larger, dominating
identity. Virtual parishes encourage charity towards offline communities, as
they do not exist as replacements to them but as supplemental sources of
community for niche identities. Ana Souza’s chapter, “Facebook: A Medium for
the Language Planning of Migrant Churches”, examines how ethnic churches adopt
the use of social media, particularly how Brazilian Pentecostal migrant
churches in Portugal, Italy, the US and the UK maintain transnational links
through Facebook. Souza also relies on the notion of scale particularly
considering language planning and policy (LPP) as linguistic choices are
embedded in a multilayered and dynamic processes that vary according to time
and space. As migrant churches exist in various sociolinguistic scales,
influenced by their location in the world, these communities rely on
linguistic choices in communicating with members. The use of various languages
is best facilitated by a flexible bilingualism that allows members to choose
the language they wish to express their faith. 

Part 2: Faith, Language and Transnational Online Practices, explores how
language practices adapt in an online environment with a transnational
audience with two chapters addressing how the Yoruba have adapted their
religious and cultural practices to digital spaces and another chapter
describing the Wikipedia entry on Yiddish and how that reflects the global
Yiddish-speaking diaspora. L. Oladipo Salami’s chapter, “Ifa, the Word and the
Virtual World: A Study of the Perceptions of and Attitudes toward Ifa
Religious Tradition on the Internet,” analyzes the adaptation of traditional
Yoruba religious practices on the Internet. The practice of Ifa involves the
use of divination, relying on the power of the spoken word in affecting ritual
power. Salami investigated the prevalence of Ifa religious practice online, in
conjunction with a questionnaire survey and interviews with Ifa priests. The
investigation of Yoruba Ifa practice online revealed that the majority of
current websites are hosted by non-Yoruba practitioners of Ifa religion, which
can either be African Americans, Brazilians, Cubans or Venezuelans or other
devotees who have adopted Yoruba names. The practice of Ifa by non-Yoruba is
accompanied by considerable innovation in digital space. Ifa priests indicated
that they were comfortable with using mobile phones or computers to conduct
rituals but stressed the importance of physical proximity in religious
practices. The overall perception of priests and practitioners is that digital
communication will make the Ifa religious tradition more open to a wider
audience.

Iyabode Deborah Akande’s chapter, “Globalising Yoruba Taboos and their
Sociocultural and Religious Values” analyzes the translocalization of Yoruba
taboos as they have transcended their ‘traditional’ spatial origin to a
digital space. Akande interviewed 24 Yoruba elders from a number of Nigerian
states to ascertain the sociocultural and religious values of Yoruba taboos.
In addition, Facebook posts and online news were examined to compare with the
interview data. Yoruba taboos can be grouped into a number of categories based
off their function and subject such as myth-related, lineage, instructive and
religion-related taboos. While taboos are based on the spoken word, they have
now been converted into text in their digitalization. The digitization of
Yoruba taboo has made them transnational and accessible in multiple places
simultaneously. The digitization of Yoruba taboo subjects originally oral
products to common CMC linguistic processes such as heterography (Blommaert
2008) in spelling, phonetic spelling, code switching, and non-normative
punctuation. The translocalization of taboo is an interesting aspect of the
intersection of language, faith, and digital communication as taboo exists to
control social behavior and guide interpersonal relations in society. The
digitization of oral taboo expands their reach, in one sense, by making them
transnational, but also limits them, in another sense, by equalizing them and
subjecting them to the same type of linguistic processes of other types of
digital texts. 

Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe’s chapter, “Yiddish Wikipedia: History Revisited”
explores how the Yiddish Wikipedia page, as a virtual community, reflects its
offline counterpart in the Yiddish-speaking, global diaspora. Wikipedia is an
open forum platform that facilitates interactions, which are dependent upon
collaboration between users to create content. The discussions on the Yiddish
Wikipedia page reflect macro-level conflict between Yiddish enthusiasts in
conflict with Modern Hebrew enthusiasts, reflecting core disagreements about
the nature of Jewish identity in comparing diaspora life with life in Israel.
Soldat-Jaffe’s chapter explores aspects of identity construction and how
virtual communities reflect their offline counterparts. This chapter analyzes
the nature of conflicts in the Wikipedia page, which results from the various
interests that are served by having a Yiddish Wikipedia page, consisting of
ultra-Orthodox Jews, young educated people who want to ‘resurrect’ the
language, and a group of older people who are not thoroughly involved. Two
forms of conflict emerge out of this scenario: objective and subjective
disagreement. Intergroup and interpersonal conflict result from the perceived
ethnic identity and the agentive subjectivity, in which language assumes an
emblematic role as people participate in social action and semiotic processes,
producing identities (Silverstein 1998). Intergroup behavior results in
conflict when there is a perceived conflict of objective interests. Conflict
resulting from differing interests results in broader conflict but leads to
social cohesion.

Part 3: Faith, Language and Online Televangelism consists of two chapters that
explore online televangelism. Tope Omoniyi’s chapter, “Digital Evangelism:
Varieties of English in Unexpected Places”, analyzes the practice of religious
ritual in digital spaces by examining a Christian charity in Nigeria,
Believers Love World Ministry (BLWM). BLWM is a translocal, transnational
ministry as it exists both in a spatial dimension in Nigeria but also existing
as an online, digital community with its own ISP. Omoniyi examines segments of
Global Communion Sunday, a monthly service on the first Sunday of each month.
Omoniyi’s analysis focuses on digital evangelism (DE), a practice of
mediatized religious practice, digitizing an offline religious ritual in the
spreading of the Christian message, found offline in both oral and written
forms, to digital practice. DE can be a rich site for online multilingualism,
which is somewhat limited in scope, in comparison with offline multilingual
religious rituals.

Shaimaa El Naggar’s chapter “American Muslim Televangelists as Religious
Celebrities: The Changing ‘Face’ of Religious Discourse”, provides an analysis
of Islamic televangelism on YouTube. Other chapters in this volume explore
various types of Christian televangelism in different digital platforms;
however, this chapter explores Muslim televangelism, a popular means of
spreading religious messaging, due to its communication of religious ideas in
simple, ‘regular’ language. El Naggar’s analysis focuses on Muslim
televangelist “celebrities” Hamza Yusuf and Baba Ali, both grew up in the
United States and represent the American Muslim community. El Naggar’s
examines how these televangelists perform their multifaceted identities by
employing both the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) and Visual Grammar to
examine televangelism as a multimodal discourse. Both televangelists use
multimodal resources to enhance their messages by employing both production
techniques to enhance quality, as well as songs, images and acting in YouTube
videos. This chapter operates from a Critical Discourse Studies (CDS)
perspective, considering discourse as a social practice, while synergizing DHA
and Visual Grammar, as important aspects of CDS. This relates to how
identities are performed in social interaction in the Goffmanian tradition
(1959). Important to this analysis is the consideration of context in various
levels. First, the immediate context in the text or oral discourse. Second,
the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between what is said. Third,
any extralinguistic social variables that can influence a situation. Lastly,
the broader sociohistorical context of the discourse. El Naggar’s analysis of
each personality’s self-representation reveals how they navigate various
genres and project their multifaceted identities. The analysis highlights the
use of other multimodal resources besides linguistic resources in the
presentation of identity, including gesture. The use of gestures by Hamza
Yusuf is an observably salient feature of how he presents various roles and
identities he wishes to convey and enact. The contrast between personalities
is striking as Hamza Yusuf presents videos in lecture halls or mosques with a
present audience, which presents a more formal environment, while Baba Ali’s
presentation is much more ‘down to earth’ and less formal with zoomed in views
on his face from the camera in his YouTube videos. Baba Ali’s projection of
ordinariness and informality does not completely reject the presence of his
online audience, as he uses rhetorical questions and other tools to connect
with his audience. The self-representation strategies of these two
televangelists reveals how different they can be but also, how their choices
project authority in different ways, with Hamza Yusuf by projecting authority
as a preacher and intellectual authority, while Baba Ali’s self-representation
is more informal as he presents himself as ‘one of the people’, which projects
a different type of authority.

Part 4: Faith, Language and Online Ritual has two chapters that explore how
offline rituals transfers into an online space. Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande’s
chapter, “Online ‘Satsang’ and Online ‘Puja’: Faith and Language in the Era of
Globalisation,” explores the practice of Hindu ritual online by considering
the practice of “Satsang” and “Puja”. The first refers to communication with
the Divine or with Gurus, while the latter refers to the ritual worship of
Hindu deities. “Satsang” is a dialogic ritual with two interlocutors, in which
devotees seek guidance from Gurus, who are believed to embody the Divine
spirit. This chapter considers whether or not the type of contact experienced
in the practice of online ritual is equivalent to the same face-to-face
experience of that ritual. With this regard, online “Satsang” is more
democratic, as more devotees can have ‘access’ to the Guru through the medium
of the Internet, a theme which has been prevalent in this volume, whereas its
offline equivalent typically involves only devotees of a particular Guru and,
thus, is more limited in scope from its online counterpart. The nature of the
connectivity between online and offline “Satsang” is also evident, as online
participants are not limited by time, space, or other such factors. “Puja” is
a performative ritual with a ‘script’ of sorts, consisting of both physical
actions and prayers for the worshiper to connect with the Divine. Various
aspects of “Puja” ritual can be performed online, while others cannot be
performed online. The performance of “Puja” online has led to a
standardization of the forms used in the ritual, as well as an increase in the
use of English by devotees to perform it. The online ritual is more accessible
than its offline counterpart for all castes, ages, religion and language.
Online “Puja” lacks the multimodal elements of the offline ritual such as the
various scents, movements, and tastes, which are an important component of the
alteration of consciousness for the success of the ritual. Online rituals are
perceived as being less authentic because there is a rupture between the
signifier and the signified religious meaning by relying on digital images of
the gods or of Gurus in these types of rituals. 

Andrey Rosowsky’s chapter, “Virtual Allegiance: Online ‘Bay`ah’ Practices
within a Worldwide Sufi Order,” analyzes the transition from orality to
textuality in the intersection between orality and literacy. It postulates
that as rituals move from offline to online environments, there is an
accompanying shift from oral to literacy performance with regard to the ritual
itself. Online practices are noted for their hybridity and the manner in which
they converge various modes of communication. Rosowsky examines “bay’ah”, the
act of pledging allegiance to Sufi Orders, which advocates the practice of a
more contemplative faith with supplementary prayers and other practices, in
addition to normative Muslim practices. The offline ritual involves being in
the physical proximity to the “shaykh” and the recitation of prescribed
prayers or other formulae, which can involve significant travel to perform the
ritual in person. Rosowsky examined the largest Sufi orders: the “Shadhili”
and the “Naqshbandi”, which operate websites and transnational networks of
members of the order. The transition from offline intimate rituals of pledging
allegiance to online ritual in transnational space involves the transition
from mostly Arabic to English, using King James Style biblical English to
index religiosity, and the transformation of the act of taking “bay’ah” from a
one time event to a hybrid event with aspects of regular online interaction in
filling out a registration form and also with a more synchronous form of
communication through a conference call with a “shaykh”. 

EVALUATION

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. The
volume accomplishes many of its goals, laid out in the Introduction, in
contributing to various fields, most notably the sociology of language and
religion, as well as studies in CMC or digital communication, and
sociolinguistics. 

One theme that seems to occur frequently in the various chapters of this
volume is the manner in which rituals or other faith practices become more
‘liberal’ or democratized as they become digital in nature. This happened with
the digitization of the Hindu rituals “Satsang” and “Puja”, in a sense with
“bay’ah”, and with Yoruba rituals. Another important aspect of the transition
from offline to online ritual is the process of transnationalization, which is
a characteristic of globalization (Blommaert 2010). These practices become
delocalized from one place and become mobile as they can be accessed anywhere
in the world. This process is accompanied by the use of English, such as in
the case of one of the Sufi Orders, that translates everything to English,
relying on a particular style of English that indexes religiosity in the
Anglophone world. Various chapters discuss multimodality, such as El-Naggar’s
chapter on the self-representation of Internet televangelists in the Muslim
community. This analysis focuses on how multimodal elements enhance each
televangelist’s presentation of their own authority. The concept of
multimodality (Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001) is an important consideration that
must be made, as all aspects of language involve some element of
multimodality. While El-Naggar’s chapter focuses on how multimodality enhances
a performative element of the televangelists’ authority, Pandharipande’s
chapter on the Hindu rituals “Satsang” and “Puja” discuss how the loss of
multimodal elements, particularly in “Puja”, in the scents, movements, and
sounds of the ritual, can change devotees’ perception of the authenticity of
the rituals themselves in a digital context. 

Additionally, many chapters discuss the issue of bi- or multilingualism
online, which is a common theme in CMC research (Androutsopoulos 2013; Jurgens
et al. 2014; etc.), such as Souza’s chapter on Brazilian Pentecostal migrant
churches in Portugal, Italy, the US and the UK. These churches rely on
flexible bilingualism that allows users to practice their faith, which gives
users some agency in practicing faith online, as well as showing how language
planning can be used efficiently by these faith communities. Soldat-Jaffe’s
chapter on the role of Yiddish Wikipedia also addresses the issue of online
multilingualism by chronicling the conflict among different voices and their
fight for control of the Yiddish Wikipedia. The site functions as a microcosm
of the larger conversation existing offline, which is concerned with the
tension between Yiddish and Hebrew and larger issues of language, religion and
ethnicity in Jewish diaspora communities. 

This book is interdisciplinary in its nature, as it treats faith and language
in a digital space, thus pertaining to both sociologists of religion and also
linguists, and it would be an interesting read for others who study aspects of
digital communication or Web 2.0 platforms. I believe the volume addresses
each component adequately; as a linguist who specializes in the study of
language in digital communication, I can specifically attest to the treatment
of language and computer-mediated communication (CMC) in each chapter, which I
find to be well in tune with various currents in these areas of current
scholarship. The elements of the work that dealt with religion were
well-written so that I was able to follow the argumentation and
contextualization of these practices within a larger discussion of the
sociology of religion as an outsider to this field. There were a few chapters
that were difficult to follow at times; yet, overall, the chapters were
well-written and pleasurable to read. I thought the volume also represented a
good variety of religious traditions and also linguistic emphases in terms of
the analyses provided within the volume. I think the pioneering nature of this
volume opens up the door to explore other religious and faith communities in
digital spaces and to consider the intimate nature of faith and language as
complementary elements in meaning making and forming the identities of
speakers both offline and online. 

REFERENCES

Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2013). Code-switching in computer-mediated
communication.
In S. C. Herring, D. Stein & T. Virtanen (eds.), Pragmatics of
Computer-mediated
Communication, 667-694. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.

Blommaert, Jan. 2008. Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice in
Central Africa. New York: Routledge. 

Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge.

Deumert, Ana. 2014. Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 

Jurgens, David, Stefan Dimitrov & Derek Ruths. (2014). Twitter Users
#CodeSwitch
Hashtags! #MoltoImportante #wow. Proceedings of the First Workshop on
Computational Approaches to Code Switching, 51-61.

Kress, Gunther R., and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal discourse: The modes and
media of contemporary communication. Vol. 312. London: Arnold, 2001.

Silverstein, Michael. 1998. The improvisational performance of culture in
realtime discursive practice. In: Sawyer, R.K. (Ed.), Creativity in
Performance. Ablex Publishing Corp, Greenwich, CT, pp. 265–312.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jordan Lavender is Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Colby College in
Waterville, ME. His research interests include online multilingualism on
social media sites and other aspects of digital and mobile communication.





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