Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces

Research in the Sociology of Language and Religion (SLR) has been gaining momentum over the past decade or so. This volume advances the discussion by focusing on computer and telephonic technologies. Students of religion and sociolinguistics alike will benefit from these skillful probes of the digital world in which we now seem to live and move and have our being.

* Brian P. Bennett, Niagara University, USA *

The explosion of online resources will inevitably affect religion, the master emotion, as well as its handmaiden, that is, its language. In this modest but significant volume, technology, language and religion come together as a viable and potent nexus.

* Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore *

From Muslim televangelist discourses and Brazilian Pentacostalist language ideologies on Facebook to the impact of Nigerian internet platforms on religious worship. From Christian digital parishes to online Hindu practices and Yiddish Wikipedia groups, this volume captures in fascinating detail the technological and discursive strategies of religious groups in our modern age as they reinvent their communities in cyberspace.

* Christian Münch, CUSC – University of Barcelona, Spain *

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.

-- Jordan Jordan Lavender, Colby College, USA * LINGUIST List 29.36