36.2128, Calls: Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development - "A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism & Meaning in Faith" (Jrnl)

Thu Jul 10 12:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2128. Thu Jul 10 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2128, Calls: Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development - "A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism & Meaning in Faith" (Jrnl)

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Date: 09-Jul-2025
From: Rizwan Ahmad [rizwan.ahmad at qu.edu.qa]
Subject: Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development - "A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism & Meaning in Faith" (Jrnl)

Journal: Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development
Issue: A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism &
Meaning in Faith
Call Deadline: 22-Aug-2025

Across the fields of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, literacy
studies, and linguistic anthropology, the role of religion has been
present yet marginalised, and often subsumed under broader categories
such as ‘identity’, ‘ideology’, or ‘cultural practice’. Despite this
presence, scholarship within linguistic and cultural studies, broadly
speaking, has not yet fully capitalised on the onto-epistemic
affordances of exploring how language and society intersect in
contexts where the Islamic faith serves as a defining worldview.
Engaging more deeply with such contexts holds significant potential
for advancing research agendas in the studies of multilingual and
multicultural development.
This special issue seeks to redress that imbalance by exploring ‘a
sociolinguistics of Islam’, a conceptual and empirical orientation, as
defined by Bhatt, Barnawi and Ahmad (2025) that recognises Islamic
contexts as specific sites of linguistic, semiotic, and cultural
negotiation deserving of dedicated scholarly attention. The
sociolinguistics of Islam refers to the exploration of how language
and society intersect within contexts where the Islamic faith is the
defining worldview shaping language, literacy, and other processes of
semiosis. Building on foundational work in the ‘sociology of language
and religion’ (e.g. Fishman 2006; Omoniyi 2010), and drawing
inspiration from sociolinguistic analyses in other religious
communities (e.g. Spolsky 2014; Shandler 2006; Fishman et al. 1966),
this special issue invites critical, theoretical, and empirical
contributions that advance the study of language within Islamic
sociolinguistic ecologies.
Islamic contexts offer rich terrains for inquiry: they encompass
nearly 2 billion adherents across a vast range of linguistic
traditions and geographies, diversity that is closely tied to
theological practices amid varying forms of religio-cultural
expression. From the incorporation and embedding of Quranic Arabic in
diverse vernaculars, to the emergence of heritage script systems (such
as Pegon, Jawi, Xiǎojīng, and Arabic Afrikaans), the sociolinguistics
of Islam traverses written, spoken, and multimodal forms of
meaning-making. This orientation can productively incorporate work on
religious language and belonging (Pihlaja 2024), heritage literacy
(e.g. Rumsey 2009; Bhatt & Li 2024), studies of Islamic soundscapes
(Hurley & Elyas 2024; Ha 2022), multilingual literacies (e.g.
Martin-Jones and Jones 2000), Arabic Medium Instruction and
translanguaging (Barnawi 2022), religion and semiotics (Leone 2004;
Bhatt 2023), among other domains in linguistic inquiry. All of which
can be productively bracketed under a sociolinguistics of Islam
broadly understood.
This special issue seeks to foreground these unique practices by
attending to how Islam, as faith, worldview, and cultural practice,
shapes – and is shaped by – linguistic practices at various social,
cultural, and political sub-strata. In doing so, it engages with
sociolingusitic debates around what Bhatt, Barnawi and Ahmad (2025)
call the ʿurfic, or vernacularised instantiations of the sacred,
alongside more transnational or ummatic forms of discourse, along with
the cultural politics that accompany these linguistic expressions. For
researchers engaged in linguistic inquiry within Muslim contexts,
whether working within applied linguistics, literacy studies, social
semiotics, or other cognate disciplines, the need to critically
understand the evolving complexities of Islamic discourse has, in our
view, become increasingly important
This special issue’s proposition to explore the multilingual and
multicultural dimensions of a sociolinguistics of Islam does not aim
to construct a ‘field’ in the conventional and disciplinary sense
(rooted in Western epistemologies). Rather, through the issue’s
contributions, we seek to articulate a cartography of inquiry grounded
in the epistemic traditions and pluralities that have historically
shaped Islamic thought (for important discussions see Lumbard 2024 and
Faruque 2024). This cartography resists rigid disciplinarity and,
instead, aligns with a decolonial emphases on undisciplinarity and
pluriversality, foregrounding the interdependence of knowledge forms –
such as ethics, metaphysics, and language – central to Islamic
intellectual heritage. We thus position this special issue as an
interdisciplinary intervention that recognises the entanglement of
language with theology, cultural politics, and semiotic ideologies in
ways that not only traverses various subfields of applied linguistics
but also incorporates aspects such as history, politics, and
multilingualism into its theoretical foundations and methodological
orientations. Therefore, we are particularly interested in
contributions that address the following themes:
 - Sociolinguistic perspectives on Muslimness and language, identity,
and belonging in Muslim communities;
 - Religious multilingualism, language shift, and the
vernacularisation of Islamic discourse;
 - Heritage literacy and scriptural practices in everyday
communication and/or Islamic education;
 - Quranic influences on phonology and lexicon across languages and
contexts, or other historical sociolinguistic points of focus;
 - Semiotic ideologies surrounding Islamic auditory and visual
cultures, including art and performance;
 - Sociolinguistic analyses of how postdigital modes of religious
expression intersect and become entangled in everyday meaning-making;
 - The politics of sacred language, language ideology, and language
policy issues from Arabisation to localisation;
 - Methodologies for analysing Islamic sociolinguistic ecologies;
 - Intersections between the above and decolonial linguistics.
We welcome both empirical and theoretical work, including ethnographic
case studies, historical analyses, and contributions from scholars
across applied linguistics, anthropology, religious studies,
education, and related fields. Submissions that simply describe
language use in Muslim contexts without engaging with the
sociolinguistic concepts, theoretical development, or critical
perspectives outlined above are unlikely to be considered for
inclusion in this special issue.
Proposed Timeline:
22nd August 2025 – Deadline for extended abstracts (700-800 words),
submitted via this form: https://forms.office.com/e/QPNYwfqWEp
7th September 2025 – Notification of abstract acceptance and
invitation to submit full manuscripts
23rd December 2025 – Deadline for full manuscripts (submitted through
JMMD online submission system)
30th March 2026 – Final submission of revised articles
Accepted articles are immediately published as Online First
Guest Editors:
Ibrar Bhatt (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
Othman Barnawi (Royal Commission for Yanbu Colleges and Institutes,
Saudi Arabia)
Rizwan Ahmad (Qatar University, Qatar)
References:
Barnawi, O. Z. (2022). Islam, language and intra-Asian student
mobility: A case study of three Indonesian male students in Saudi
Arabia. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 32(2), 214-235. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00074.bar
Bhatt, I., Barnawi, O. Z. and Ahmad, R. (in press, 2025). Exploring a
Sociolinguistics of Islam, Applied Linguistics. DOI: …
Bhatt, I. (2023). A Semiotics of Muslimness in China. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009415910
Bhatt, I. & Li, Z. (2024). Towards understanding heritage literacy.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, pp. 1–18.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2024.2422457.
Faruque, M.U. (2024). Decolonizing the Muslim mind: A philosophical
critique. The Philosophical Forum, 55: 353-375.
https://doi.org/10.1111/phil.12378
Fishman, J. A., Nahirny, V. C., Hofman, J. E., Hayden, R. G.,
Warshauer, M. E., Kloss, H., Lemaire, H. B., Chester, C., Christian,
J. & Glazer, N. (1966). Language loyalty in the United States: The
maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American
ethnic and religious groups. The Hague: Mouton.
Fishman, J. A. (2006). ‘A Decalogue of Basic Theoretical Perspectives
for a Sociology of Language and Religion’. In: Omoniyi, T. & Fishman,
J. A. (Eds.) Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ha, G. (2022). The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi
Mediascape in China. Columbia University Press.
Hurley, Z., Elyas, T.(2024) Soundscapes of the Adhan, the Islamic
Call-to-Prayer: A Semiotic More-Than-Digital Analysis. Postdigit Sci
Educ 6, 821–843 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00479-z
Leone, M. (2004). Religious Conversion and Identity: The Semiotic
Analysis of Texts (1st ed.). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203161944
Lumbard, J. E. B. (2024). Islam and the Challenge of Epistemic
Sovereignty. Religions, 15(4), 406.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040406
Martin-Jones, M. & Jones, K. (2000). Multilingual Literacies: Reading
and Writing Different Worlds. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
Omoniyi, T. (2010). The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change,
Conflict and Accommodation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pihlaja S. (2024) Narrative and Religion in the Superdiverse City.
Cambridge University Press
Rumsey, S. K. (2009). Heritage Literacy: Adoption, Adaptation, and
Alienation of Multimodal Literacy Tools. College Composition and
Communication, 60(3), pp. 573–586.
Shandler, J. (2006). Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular
Language & Culture. Berkeley: University of California
Spolsky, B. (2014). The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic
History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Applied Linguistics
                     Discourse Analysis
                     History of Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2128
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