Navigating Languages: Literacies and Identities Religion in Young Lives

259 Pages·2016·2.34 MB·

by  Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk, Eve Gregory

Navigating Languages, Literacies
and Identities
“This complex bringing together of work in a number of fi elds related to religion,
education, identity and literacy practices offers an original contribution that can help
those already working in perhaps some of these areas to bridge and link a range of
perspectives in a global context.”
— Brian Street, King’s College London, UK
Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities s howcases innovative research at
the interface of religion and multilingualism, offering an analytical focus on religion
in children and adolescents’ everyday lives and experiences. The volume examines
the connections between language and literacy practices and social identities associ-
ated with religion in a variety of sites of learning and socialization, namely homes,
religious education classes, places of worship, and faith-related schools and secular
schools. Contributors engage with a diverse set of complex multiethnic and religious
communities, and investigate the rich multilingual, multiliterate and multis criptal
practices associated with religion that children and adolescents engage in with a
range of mediators, including siblings, peers, parents, grandparents, religious lead-
ers and other members of the religious community. The volume is organized into
three sections according to context and participants: (1) religious practices at home
and across generations, (2) religious education classes and places of worship and
(3) bridging home, school and community. The edited book will be a valuable resource
for researchers in applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, socio linguistics, inter-
cultural communication, and early years, primary and secondary education.
Vally Lytra is Lecturer in Languages in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Her books include Play Frames and Social Identities (Benjamins, 2007), Multilingualism
and Identities across Contexts : Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Turkish-speaking
Youth in Europe (co-editor Jens Normann Jørgensen, University of Copenhagen,
2008), S ites of Multilingualism: Complementary Schools in Britain Today (co-editor
Peter Martin, Trentham, 2010) and When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on the Relationship since 1923 (Ashgate, 2014).
Dinah Volk is Professor Emerita, Early Childhood Education, Cleveland State Univer-
sity, Cleveland, Ohio. She is co-author of “Diversity as a Verb in Preservice Teacher Edu-
cation” in C ontemporary Issues in Early Childhood and co-editor with Gregory and
Long of a special issue of J ournal of Early Childhood Literacy o n syncretic literacies.
Eve Gregory is Professor Emerita at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her books
include City Literacies (joint author, Ann Williams) (Routledge, 2000), On Writing
Educational Ethnographies: The Art Of Collusion (joint authors J. Conteh, C. Kearney
and A. Mor-Sommerfeld) and L earning to Read in a New Language (Routledge, 2008).
Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism
Edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, MOSAIC Centre for
Research on Multilingualism, University of Birmingham, UK
and Joan Pujolar Cos, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
3 Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography
Edited by Sheena Gardner and Marilyn Martin-Jones
4 Bilingual Education and Language Policy in the Global South
Edited by Jo Arthur Shoba and Feliciano Chimbutane
5 Urban Schools and English Language Education in Late Modern China
A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography
Miguel Pérez-Milans
6 A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora
Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies
Edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo
7 Language, Literacy and Diversity
Moving Words
Edited by Christopher Stroud and Mastin Prinsloo
8 Global Portuguese
Linguistic Ideologies in Late Modernity
Edited by Luiz Paulo Moita-Lopes
9 Language and Learning in a Post-Colonial Context
A Critical Ethnographic Study in Schools in Haiti
Marky Jean-Pierre
10 Multilingualism in the Chinese Diaspora Worldwide
Transnational Connections and Local Social Realities
Edited by Li Wei
11 Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities
Religion in Young Lives
Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory
Navigating Languages,
Literacies and Identities
Religion in Young Lives
Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk
and Eve Gregory
First published 2016
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lytra, Vally, editor. | Volk, Dinah, editor. | Gregory,
Eve, editor.
Title: Navigating languages, literacies and identities : religion in
young lives / Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory.
Description: New York : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Routledge
Critical studies in multilingualism ; 11 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016004727 | ISBN 9781138824249 (alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315740805 (ebk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages—Study and teaching—
Religious aspects. | Literacy—Religious aspects. | Multilingualism
in children—Religious aspects. | Identity (Psychology) in children—
Religious aspects. | Spirituality. | Sociolinguistics.
Classification: LCC P53.76 .N38 2016 | DDC 200.83—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016004727
ISBN: 978-1-138-82424-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74080-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures vii
Prologue ix
VALLY LYTRA, DINAH VOLK AND EVE GREGORY
Introduction 1
VALLY LYTRA, DINAH VOLK AND EVE GREGORY
PART I
Religious Practices at Home and across Generations 19
1 Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson:
Syncretic Teaching and Learning in a Puerto Rican Family 21
DINAH VOLK
2 Easter Celebrations at Home: Acquiring Symbolic
Knowledge and Constructing Identities 39
ANA SOUZA, OLGA BARRADAS AND MALGORZATA WOODHAM
3 Coming of Age: Amish Heritage Literacy Practices of
Rumspringa , Adult Baptism, and Shunning 56
SUZANNE KESLER RUMSEY
PART II
Religious Education Classes and Places of Worship 69
4 Socialization into Religious Sensation in Children’s
Catholic Religious Instruction 71
PATRICIA BAQUEDANO-LÓPEZ
vi Contents
5 “The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively:
Language, Literacy, and African American Student Learning
in the Black Church 85
TRYPHENIA B. PEELE-EADY
6 Heavenly Entextualisations: The Acquisition and
Performance of Classical Religious Texts 110
ANDREY ROSOWSKY
7 Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling
Traditions 126
LESLIE C. MOORE
8 Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk
in a Tamil Hindu/Saiva Faith Community in London 141
VALLY LYTRA, EVE GREGORY AND ARANI ILANKUBERAN
PART III
Bridging Home, School and Community 159
9 Joseph . . . Yousouf: Changing Names, Navigating Spaces,
Articulating Identities 161
AMBARIN MOOZNAH AULEEAR OWODALLY
10 The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies in
Hasidic Homes and Schools in Brooklyn 176
AYALA FADER
11 Engendering ‘Dispositions’ through Communicative and
Semiotic Practices: Insights from the Nishkam Nursery Project 193
GOPINDER KAUR SAGOO
12 Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith:
Ghanaian Pentecostal and Bangladeshi Muslim Communities
in London 213
CHARMIAN KENNER, AMOAFI KWAPONG, HALIMUN CHOUDHURY
AND MAHERA RUBY
Conclusion 227
SUSI LONG
List of Contributors 235
Index 243
Figures
1.1 Benny’s journal with Justin Bieber lyrics 26
1.2 Benny’s journal with religious lyrics “by no se”
[I don’t know] 27
1.3 Benny reading the Bible with his grandmother’s mediation 28
2.1 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 1 46
2.2 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 2 46
2.3 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 3 46
2.4 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 4 47
2.5 Adam’s scrapbook, page 15 48
2.6 Adam’s scrapbook, page 16 49
2.7 Adam’s scrapbook, page 17 50
5.1 A typical text for “The Responsive Reading” 91
6.1 Examples of the use of English in primers 117
6.2 A typical example of how to articulate Arabic sounds
explained in English 118
8.1 The Sri Murugan Temple 146
8.2 The peacock feather adorning the cover of the scrapbook 149
8.3 Drawing of the Sri Murugan Temple in glitter 152
11.1 Morning greetings and ‘show and tell’ in the Reception class 207
11.2 Sikh faith-inspired original artwork mounted in the nursery’s
entrance hallway 208
12.1 Nuha’s mind map (front) 221
12.2 Nuha’s mind map (back) 221
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Prologue
This book is being published at a moment of unprecedented global flows
of people, goods, services and ideas within and across international bor-
ders. These global flows have intensified debates over democracy, pluralism,
social cohesion and the integration or not of immigrants, minorities and
refugees in contemporary societies. In the context of these debates, secular-
ism, religion and their intertwined nature in the aforementioned processes
have come under close scrutiny. Yet, the study of religion in children and
adolescents’ lives with reference to their learning, socialization and identi-
ties has largely remained in the margins of academic scholarship. The few
studies that do exist demonstrate that children are socialized from an early
age through a range of interconnected language and literacy practices into
moral, cultural, aesthetic and religious values, beliefs and dispositions that
shape their interactions in religious and secular contexts. Moreover, these
studies illustrate that children’s developing religious subjectivities entail
complex interactions among their memberships in local, national and trans-
national communities as they acquire knowledge and competences in rich
linguistic and scriptal repertoires, discursive and embodied practices, histor-
ical and moral narratives and sacred texts. This is the first edited collection
that brings together some of the most recent and ongoing scholarship at the
intersection of religion, languages, literacies and identities and opens a space
for dialogue in this emerging field.
The Editors