Research on Religious Language

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See here for a catalogue of the some of the methodological tools used to find and analyse religious language.

Religious Language and Discourse (General)

  • Alston WP (2005) Religious Language. In: Wainwright WJ (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 220–244. DOI: 10.1093/0195138090.003.0010.
  • Binkley LJ and Hick JH (1962) What Characterizes Religious Language? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 2(1): 18–24. DOI: 10.2307/1384089.
  • Chilton P and Kopytowska M (2018) Religion, Language, and the Human Mind. Chilton P and Kopytowska M (eds) Religion, Language, and the Human Mind. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190636647.001.0001.
  • Crystal D (2018) Whatever Happened to Theolinguistics? In: Religion, Language, and the Human Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–18. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190636647.003.0001.
  • Darquennes J and Vandenbussche W (2011) Language and religion as a sociolinguistic field of study: Some introductory notes. Sociolinguistica 25: 1–11. Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/solin.2011.25.issue-1/9783110236262.1/9783110236262.1.xml (accessed 28 November 2018).
  • Hall DE, Koenig HG and Meador KG (2004) Conceptualizing ‘Religion’: How Language Shapes and Constrains Knowledge in the Study of Religion and Health. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2004.0050.
  • Heather N (2000) Religious Language and Critical Discourse Analysis: Ideology and Identity in Christian Discourse Today. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
  • Hobbs V (2021). An Introduction to Religious Language. Bloomsbury.
  • Keane W (1997) Religious Language. Annual Review of Anthropology 26(1): 47–71. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.47.
  • Omoniyi T (ed.) (2010) The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/9780230304710.
  • Omoniyi T and Fishman JA (eds) (2006) Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion. Discourse approaches to politics, society, and culture,. Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI: 10.1075/dapsac.20.
  • Pihlaja, Stephen. (forthcoming, 2021) Talk about Faith: how debate and conversation shape belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Pihlaja, Stephen (ed.). (forthcoming, 2021) Analysing Religious Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Richardson P, Mueller CM and Pihlaja S (2021, forthcoming) Cognitive Linguistics and Religious Language: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Sawyer JFA and Simpson JMY (2001) Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion. Oxford: Elsevier.
  • van Noppen JP (ed.) (1981) Theolinguistics. Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Available at: http://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/Record/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/44718/TOC (accessed 11 December 2018).
  • van Noppen JP (2011) Critical Theolinguistics vs. the Literalist Paradigm. Sociolinguistica 25: 28–40. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/1170082/Critical_Theolinguistics_vs._the_Literalist_Paradigm (accessed 13 November 2019).

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Religious Archaism

  • Bowen, Gregory A., “Sounding sacred: The adoption of biblical archaisms in the Book of Mormon and other 19th century texts” (2016). Open Access Dissertations. 945. (Link)
  • Crystal D (1964) A Liturgical Language in a Linguistic Perspective. New Blackfriars 46(534). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111): 148–156. DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-2005.1964.tb07472.x.
    Nevalainen, T. (1991). Motivated archaism: The use of affirmative periphrastic do in Early Modern English liturgical prose. Historical English syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 303-320. (Link)

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Religious Metaphor

  • Al-Kharabsheh A (2011) Arabic Death Discourse in Translation: Euphemism and Metaphorical Conceptualization in Jordanian Obituaries. Across Languages and Cultures 12(1). Akadémiai Kiadó: 19–48. DOI: 10.1556/Acr.12.2011.1.2.
  • Campbell J (2001) Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, California: New World Library. DOI: 10.5860/choice.39-5759.
  • Chew PG-L (2010) Metaphors of Change: Adolescent Singaporeans Switching Religion. In: Omoniyi T (ed.) The Sociology of Language and Religion. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 156–189. DOI: 10.1057/9780230304710_8.
  • Dorst, A. G., & Klop, M. L. (2017). Not a holy father: Dutch Muslim teenagers’ metaphors for Allah. Metaphor & the Social World, 7(1). (Link)
  • Koller V (2009) Missions and Empires: Religious and Political Metaphors in Corporate Discourse. In: Musolff A and Zinken J (eds) Metaphor and Discourse. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 116–134. DOI: 10.1057/9780230594647_8.
  • Lewis TV (2013) Religious Rhetoric in Southern College Football: New Uses for Religious Metaphors. Southern Communication Journal 78(3): 202–214. DOI: 10.1080/1041794X.2013.770064.
  • Pihlaja, Stephen. (2013) ‘It’s all red ink’: the interpretation of Biblical metaphor among Evangelical Christian YouTube users. Language and Literature 22/2: 103–117. DOI: 10.1177/0963947013483996
  • Pihlaja, Stephen. (2014) Antagonism on YouTube: Metaphor in Online Discourse. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781472566690
  • Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017) ‘When Noah built the ark…’: metaphor and Biblical stories in Facebook preaching. Metaphor and the Social World 7/1: 88-105. DOI: 10.1075/msw.7.1.06pih
  • Pihlaja S (2017). Special issue on metaphor in religion and spirituality. Metaphor and the Social World, 7(1), pp.1-4.
  • Ringrow, H. (2020). “I can feel myself being squeezed and stretched, moulded and grown, and expanded in my capacity to love loudly and profoundly”: Metaphor and religion in motherhood blogs. Discourse, Context & Media, 37, 100429. (Link)
  • Ringrow, H. (2020). ‘Beautiful masterpieces’: Metaphors of the female body in modest fashion blogs. In Contemporary Media Stylistics. Bloomsbury Publishing Company. (Link)
  • Shaver, J.A., 2011. Metaphors of travel in the language of hymns: 1650–1800 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow).
  • Soskice JM (2007) The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2009.01546.x.
  • Spencer AB (1996) Father-Ruler : The Meaning of the Metaphor ‘Father’ for God in the Bible. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39(3): 433–442.
  • van Noppen JP (1980) Spatial Theography: A Study in Linguistic Expression and Communication in Contemporary British Popular Theology (1960-1970). Université libre de Bruxelles.
  • van Noppen JP and Buscarlet J-M (eds) (1983) Metaphor and Religion. Brussel: Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

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Religion in Advertising

  • Edwards KB (2012) Admen and Eve: The Bible in Contemporary Advertising. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press.
  • Mallia KL (2009) From the Sacred to the Profane: A Critical Analysis of the Changing Nature of Religious Imagery in Advertising. Journal of Media and Religion 8(3). Informa UK Limited: 172–190. DOI: 10.1080/15348420903091162.
  • Robert E and Ukpongetuk N (2014) Lexico-Semantic Features in the Language of Religion and Advertising. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences 4(9): 60–72.
  • Sheffield T (2006) The Religious Dimensions of Advertising. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/9780230601406.

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Religious Conversion

  • Buckser A and Glazier SD (2003) The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Chew PG-L (2010) Metaphors of Change: Adolescent Singaporeans Switching Religion. In: Omoniyi T (ed.) The Sociology of Language and Religion. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 156–189. DOI: 10.1057/9780230304710_8.
  • Greil AL and Rudy DR (1983) Conversion to the World View of Alcoholics Anonymous: A Refinement of Conversion Theory. Qualitative Sociology 6(1). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Human Sciences Press: 5–28. DOI: 10.1007/BF00987195.
  • Leone M (2004) Religious Conversion and Identity: The Semiotic Analysis of Texts. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Malesh P (2009) Sharing our Recipes: Vegan Conversion Narratives as Social Praxis. In: McKenzie Stevens S and Malesh PM (eds) Active Voices: Composing a Rhetoric of Social Movements. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 131–145.
  • Priest RJ (2003) ‘I Discovered My Sin!’: Aguaruna Evangelical Conversion Narratives. In: Buckser A and Glazier SD (eds) The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. Lantham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 95–108.
  • Stromberg PG (2014) The Role of Language in Religious Conversion. In: Rambo LR and Farhadian CE (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 117–139.

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Death

  • Al-Ali, M. N. (2005). Communicating messages of solidarity, promotion and pride in death announcements genre in Jordanian newspapers. Discourse & Society, 16(1), 5-31. (Link)
  • Clarke, J. N. (2006). Death under control: The portrayal of death in mass print English language magazines in Canada. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 52(2), 153-167. (Link)
  • Cook, G., & Walter, T. (2005). Rewritten rites: language and social relations in traditional and contemporary funerals. Discourse & Society, 16(3), 365-391. (Link)
  • Fernández, E. C. (2006). The language of death: Euphemism and conceptual metaphorization in Victorian obituaries. SKY Journal of Linguistics, 19(2006), 101-130. (Link)
  • Hedtke, L. (2002). Reconstructing the language of death and grief. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 10(4), 285-293. (Link)
  • Labov, W. (2013). The language of life and death: The transformation of experience in oral narrative. Cambridge University Press.
  • MAINA, A. O. (2017). A lexico–semantic analysis of selected obituaries in the daily nation newspaper (Doctoral dissertation, Maseno University). (Link)
  • Ong’onda, A. N. (2018). A Cognitive Analysis of Meta phorical euphemisms of death in Kenyan Newspaper Obtuaries. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 3(2), 239294. (Link)
  • Rawlings, D., Tieman, J. J., Sanderson, C., Parker, D., & Miller-Lewis, L. (2017). Never say die: death euphemisms, misunderstandings and their implications for practice. International journal of palliative nursing, 23(7), 324-330. (Link)
  • Rodriguez, K. L., Gambino, F. J., Butow, P., Hagerty, R., & Arnold, R. M. (2007). Pushing up daisies: implicit and explicit language in oncologist–patient communication about death. Supportive care in cancer, 15(2), 153-161. (Link)
  • Taylor, N., & Fraser, H. (2017). Slaughterhouses: The language of life, the discourse of death. In The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies (pp. 179-199). Palgrave Macmillan, London. (Link)

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Religious Language in Everyday Talk

  • Clift, R., & Helani, F. (2010). Inshallah: Religious invocations in Arabic topic transition. Language in Society, 357-382. (Link)
  • Dorst, A. G., & Klop, M. L. (2017). Not a holy father: Dutch Muslim teenagers’ metaphors for Allah. Metaphor & the Social World, 7(1). (Link)

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Hymns and Other Religious Song

  • Apted ME. Songs from the Inyjalarrku: the use of a non-translatable spirit language in a song set from north-west Arnhem Land, Australia. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 2010 Jan 1;30(1):93-103.
  • Kermas S (2011) The Language of Nineteenth Century Women Hymn Writers: Intercultural Insights. Lingue e Linguaggi 5: 7–22. Available at: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/linguelinguaggi/article/viewFile/11435/10480 (accessed 17 July 2019).
  • Lassiter, L.E., 2001. ” From Here on, I Will Be Praying to You”: Indian Churches, Kiowa Hymns, and Native American Christianity in Southwestern Oklahoma. Ethnomusicology, 45(2), pp.338-352.
  • Mantra, I.B.N. and Widiastuti, I.A.M.S., 2018. Structural analysis and religiosity of Balinese song lyrics. International journal of linguistics, literature and culture, 4(4), pp.69-75.
  • Monteiro G (1964) Parodies of Scripture, Prayer, and Hymn. The Journal of American Folklore 77(303): 45. DOI: 10.2307/538018.
  • Shaver, J.A., 2011. Metaphors of travel in the language of hymns: 1650–1800 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow).
  • Shoaps RA (2002) ‘Pray Earnestly’: The Textual Construction of Personal Involvement in Pentecostal Prayer and Song. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(1): 34–71. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2002.12.1.34.
  • Titon, J.T., 1988. Powerhouse for God: Speech, chant, and song in an Appalachian Baptist church. University of Texas Press.
  • Turpin M, Stebbins T. The language of song: Some recent approaches in description and analysis. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 2010 Jan 1;30(1):1-7.
  • van Noppen JP (2005) Hymns as Literature, Language and Discourse: Wesleyan Hymns as a Case Example. The Hymn 56(3): 22–30.
  • Wallace, R.K., 2007. Hymns as a Resource for the Language of Worship. The Hymn, 58(3), p.33.
  • Watson, J.R., 1990. The Language of Hymns: Some Contemporary Problems. In Language and the Worship of the Church (pp. 174-195). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

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Religious Sermons and Preaching

  • Cheong EY (1999) Analysis of sermons delivered by Korean, Filipino and American pastors: The view of genre analysis. RELC Journal 30(2): 44–60. DOI: 10.1177/003368829903000203.
  • Dzameshi AK (1995) Social Motivations for Politeness Behavior in Christian Sermonic Discourse. Anthropological Linguistics 37(2): 192–215.
  • Eldin AATS (2014) Critical Discourse Analysis of Religious Sermons in Egypt: Case Study of Amr Khalid’s Sermons. International Education Studies 7(11): 68. DOI: 10.5539/ies.v7n11p68.
  • Esimaje AU (2014) A Descriptive Survey of the Character of English Lexis in Sermons. SAGE Open 4(4): 1–16. DOI: 10.1177/2158244014563044.
  • Ethelston G (2009) Appraisal in Evangelical sermons: The Projection and Functions of Misguided Voices. Text & Talk – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies 29(6). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG: 683–704. DOI: 10.1515/TEXT.2009.035.
  • Gaffney PD (1994) The Prophet’s Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Hobbs V (2018) Rape Culture in Sermons on Divorce. In: Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 87–110. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-72224-5_6.
  • Hobbs V (2019) The Discourse of Divorce in Conservative Christian Sermons. Critical Discourse Studies. Informa UK Limited: 1–18. DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2019.1665079.
  • Ishii S (1992) Buddhist Preaching: The Persistent Main Undercurrent of Japanese Traditional Rhetorical Communication. Communication Quarterly 40(4). Taylor & Francis Group: 391–397. DOI: 10.1080/01463379209369856.
  • Končar AB (2008) Contemporary Sermons: From Grammatical Annotation to Rhetorical Design. Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use: Odense Working Papers in Language and Commmunication 29: 503–521.
  • Malmström H (2016) Engaging the Congregation: The Place of Metadiscourse in Contemporary Preaching. Applied Linguistics 37(4). University of California Press,: 561–582. DOI: 10.1093/applin/amu052.
  • Pihlaja, Stephen. (2020). The style of online preachers. In Ringrow, Helen & Stephen Pihlaja (eds.). Contemporary Media Stylistics. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Rose LA (1997) Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church. Westminster John Knox Press.
  • Singh PKH and Thuraisingam T (2011) Language for Reconciliation in Religious Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Contradictions in Sermons Explored through the Activity Theory Framework. Multilingua – Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 30(3–4): 391–404. DOI: 10.1515/mult.2011.019.
  • Soepriatmadji L (2009) Genre analysis on English Friday Sermons prepared by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore. Dinamika Bahasa Dan Budaya 3(2): 171–184. Available at: https://www.unisbank.ac.id/ojs/index.php/fbib1/article/view/449 (accessed 22 August 2019).

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Religious Language in Politics

  • Abdul-Latif E (2011) Interdiscursivity between Political and Religious Discourses in a Speech by Sadat. Journal of Language and Politics 10(1): 50–67. DOI: 10.1075/jlp.10.1.03abd.
  • Coe K and Domke D (2006) Petitioners or Prophets? Presidential Discourse, God, and the Ascendancy of Religious Conservatives. Journal of Communication 56(2): 309–330. DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00021.x.
  • Crines AS and Theakston K (2015) ‘Doing God’ in Number 10: British Prime Ministers, Religion, and Political Rhetoric. Politics and Religion 8(1). Cambridge University Press: 155–177. DOI: 10.1017/S1755048315000036.
  • Koller V, Kopf S and Miglbauer M (2019) Discourses of Brexit. London: Routledge.

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Prayer

  • Baquedano-López P (1999) Prayer. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1): 197–200.
  • Field CD (2017) Britain on its Knees: Prayer and the Public since the Second World War. Social Compass 64(1). SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England: 92–112. DOI: 10.1177/0037768616685014.
  • Field M and Blackhorse T (2002) The Dual Role of Metonymy in Navajo Prayer. Anthropological Linguistics 44(3): 217–230. DOI: 10.2307/30028848.
  • Fitzgerald W (2012) Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance. University Park, PA: Penn State Press. DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2014.856734.
  • Katz MH (2013) Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139034333.
  • Kohnen T (2012) Prayers in the History of English: A Corpus-based Study. Language and Computers 76(1). Brill | Rodopi: 165–180. DOI: 10.1163/9789401207935_009.
  • Ladd KL and Spilka B (2006) Inward, Outward, Upward Prayer: Scale Reliability and Validation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45(2): 233–251.
  • Lašťovičková M (2013) The Language of Intercessory Prayers. Palacky University.
  • Reichard GA (1944) Prayer: The Compulsive Word. New York: J. J. Augustin.
  • Shoaps RA (2002) ‘Pray Earnestly’: The Textual Construction of Personal Involvement in Pentecostal Prayer and Song. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(1): 34–71. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2002.12.1.34.
  • Szuchewycz, B. (1994). Evidentiality in ritual discourse: The social construction of religious meaning. Language in Society, 389-410. (Link)
  • van Noppen JP (2009) Prayers and the Presidency. In: Slembrouck S, Taverniers M, and van Herreweghe M (eds) From Will to Well: Studies in Linguistics, Offered to Anne-Marie Simon. Gent: Academia Press, pp. 451–460.

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Sport

  • MONAGHAN, F., 2020. F/Anfield: Banners, Tweets, and “Owning” Football’s Linguistic Landscape. Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes: Questioning Boundaries and Opening Spaces, p.177.
  • Remillard A (2016) Sports and Religion in America. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.145.

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Taboo, Blasphemy and Euphemism

  • Ávila-Cabrera, J. J. (2016). The treatment of offensive and taboo language in the subtitling of Reservoir Dogs into Spanish. TRANS: revista de traductología, 20, 25-40. (Link)
  • García, R. A. V. (2000). Transgressions in the foreign language: taboo subjects, offensive language and euphemisms for Spanish learners of English. Babel–AFIAL: Aspectos de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá, (9), 25-62. (Link)
  • Gao, C. (2013). A sociolinguistic study of English taboo language. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(12), 2310 (Link).
  • Gómez, M. C. (2009). Towards a new approach to the linguistic definition of euphemism. Language Sciences, 31(6), 725-739. (Link)
  • Hughes, G. (2006). An encyclopedia of swearing: The social history of oaths, profanity, foul language, and ethnic slurs in the English-speaking world. ME Sharpe. (Link)
  • Jay, K. L., & Jay, T. B. (2015). Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: Deconstructing the poverty-of-vocabulary myth. Language Sciences, 52, 251-259. (Link).
  • Mercury, R. E. (1995). Swearing: A” bad” part of language; A good part of language learning. TESL Canada journal, 28-36. (Link)
  • Nash, D. (2007). Blasphemy in the Christian world: a history. Oxford University Press. (Link).
  • O’Driscoll, J. (2020). Offensive Language: Taboo, Offence and Social Control. Bloomsbury Publishing. (Link)
  • Osborne, D. (2020). Maledictive Language: Cursing and Swearing. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 1-8. (Link)
  • Waterhouse, M. (2005). Taboo language and the ESL learner: An ethnographic study (Doctoral dissertation, University of Ottawa (Canada). (Link)
  • Wedlock, J. (2020). Teaching” about” Taboo Language in EFL/ESL Classes: A Starting Point. ORTESOL Journal, 37, 33-47. (Link)
  • Widlitzki, B., & Huber, M. (2016). 14 Taboo Language and Swearing in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century English: A Diachronic Study Based on the Old Bailey Corpus. In Corpus linguistics on the move (pp. 313-336). Brill Rodopi. (Link).

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Wedding Invitations

  • Sawalmeh, M. (2018). Jordanian wedding invitation as a genre: An analysis of rhetorical structure and linguistic features. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 1(1), 106-114 (Link)
  • Sawalmeh, Murad Hassan. “A sociolinguistic study of Muslim and Christian wedding invitation genre in the Jordanian society.” Journal: Journal of Advances in Linguistics 5.1 (2014). (Link)

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