Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context

Author: Andrey Rosowsky

Format:
Paperback
Related Formats:
Hardback, Ebook(PDF), Ebook(EPUB)
ISBN:
9781847690920
Published:
Publisher:
Multilingual Matters
Number of pages:
256
Dimensions:
210mm x 148mm
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This ethnographic study investigates for the first time in any significant depth the literacy practices associated with the religion of Islam as they are shaped, lived and experienced within a typical multilingual Muslim community in the United Kingdom. It seeks to counterbalance prevailing views on such practices which have often been misinformed, misrepresented and misunderstood. Making liberal recourse to the words, views and lives of its participants, this book describes, explores and celebrates liturgical literacy as a major contributor to group and individual cultural, linguistic and religious identities. In a political and social climate often inimical to religious practices in general, and to Islamic ones in particular, this book highlights the centrality and significance of such literacy practices to minority ethno-religious communities in their daily lives.

This brief volume contributes very constructively to the fields of "Sociology of literacy", "Sociology of Religion" and the joint and pioneering field "Sociology of Language and Religion" and can serve as an excellent introductory textbook to each of them when taught as undergraduate or early graduate level courses. In addition, it covers beautifully such increasingly vital areas as Islam in England and in South Asia, diglossia between modern spoken, read and written vernaculars and related, but often very different, classical languages of rote-recited liturgy.

This is a book that is at once entertaining, informative and highly educative.

Andrey Rosowsky was a secondary school teacher of English and Languages for twenty years spending most of his career working in multiethnic and multilingual schools in the UK and elsewhere. After spending three years working for a local authority as a literacy consultant, he joined the School of Education at the University of Sheffield in 2005 and now works in Initial Teacher Education.

Acknowledgements

List of Plates

List of Tables and Figures

Part I The Study of Liturgical Literacy

Chapter 1 Introduction to Liturgical Literacy

Chapter 2 The Community and its Ethnography

Part II The Community and its Liturgical Literacy

Chapter 3 Children

Chapter 4 Parents

Chapter 5 Teachers

Chapter 6 Organisers

Part III The Settings for Liturgical Literacy

Chapter 7 Mosques

Chapter 8 Home

Chapter 9 School

Part IV The Languages of Liturgical Literacy

Chapter 10 Urdu

Chapter 11 Mirpuri-Punjabi

Chapter 12 English

Chapter 13 Arabic

Part V Concluding Remarks and Implications

Chapter 14 Concluding Remarks

References

Postgraduate, Research / Professional
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