The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion is the first ever comprehensive collection of research on religion and language, with over 35 authors from 15 countries, presenting a range of linguistic and discourse analytic research on religion and belief in different discourse contexts.

The contributions show the importance of studying language and religion and for bringing together work in this area across sub-disciplines, languages, cultures, and geographical boundaries. The Handbook focuses on three major topics: Religious and Sacred Language, Institutional Discourse, and Religious Identity and Community. Scholars from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds investigate these topics using a range of linguistic perspectives including Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, and Conversation Analysis. The data analysed in these chapters come from a variety of religious backgrounds and national contexts. Linguistic data from all the major world religions are included, with sacred texts, conversational data, and institutional texts included for analysis.

The Handbook is intended to be useful for readers from different subdisciplines within linguistics, but also to researchers working in other disciplines including philosophy, theology, and sociology. Each chapter gives both a template for research approaches and suggestions for future research and will inspire readers at every stage of their career.

Stephen Pihlaja lives and teaches in Birmingham (UK). He is the author of several books on talk about religion, including Talk about Faith: how debate and conversation shape belief (2021). He is interested in how people talk about and understand their own beliefs in diverse contexts.

Helen Ringrow researches gender and religion, particularly in online contexts. She is author of The Language of Cosmetics Advertising (2016) and co-editor of Contemporary Media Stylistics (2020).