{"title":"“I’m kind of agnostic”","authors":"Nirukshi Perera","doi":"10.1075/aral.19083.per","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Transplanting non-Western religions to Western nations results in first-generation migrant attempts to transmit faith in vastly different contexts. Especially as adolescents, second-generation migrants tackle mediating their personal religious beliefs in a society with diverse religions and ideologies as well as negotiating membership of their ethnoreligious community. This paper draws from an ethnography in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia. I present Sri Lankan teenage migrants’ discourse from their faith classroom to elucidate processes of belief positioning. In working out their emergent, and provisional, faith identities, the students deploy mainly Tamil and English linguistic features in their belief narratives. Flexible languaging complements their “syncretic acts” – the practice of drawing on diverse ideologies and experiences (outside the boundaries of a particular religion) to form personalized beliefs. Translanguaging thus facilitates the expression of circumspect, nuanced, and non-traditional interpretations of their heritage religion. Understanding such processes of belief positioning can help societies and institutions to work towards migrant youth inclusion.","PeriodicalId":43911,"journal":{"name":"Australian Review of Applied Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Australian Review of Applied Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.19083.per","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Abstract Transplanting non-Western religions to Western nations results in first-generation migrant attempts to transmit faith in vastly different contexts. Especially as adolescents, second-generation migrants tackle mediating their personal religious beliefs in a society with diverse religions and ideologies as well as negotiating membership of their ethnoreligious community. This paper draws from an ethnography in a Tamil Hindu temple in Australia. I present Sri Lankan teenage migrants’ discourse from their faith classroom to elucidate processes of belief positioning. In working out their emergent, and provisional, faith identities, the students deploy mainly Tamil and English linguistic features in their belief narratives. Flexible languaging complements their “syncretic acts” – the practice of drawing on diverse ideologies and experiences (outside the boundaries of a particular religion) to form personalized beliefs. Translanguaging thus facilitates the expression of circumspect, nuanced, and non-traditional interpretations of their heritage religion. Understanding such processes of belief positioning can help societies and institutions to work towards migrant youth inclusion.
期刊介绍:
The Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) is the preeminent journal of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA). ARAL is a peer reviewed journal that promotes scholarly discussion and contemporary understandings of language-related matters with a view to impacting on real-world problems and debates. The journal publishes empirical and theoretical research on language/s in educational, professional, institutional and community settings. ARAL welcomes national and international submissions presenting research related to any of the major sub-disciplines of Applied Linguistics as well as transdisciplinary studies. Areas of particular interest include but are not limited to: · Analysis of discourse and interaction · Assessment and evaluation · Bi/multilingualism and bi/multilingual education · Corpus linguistics · Cognitive linguistics · Language, culture and identity · Language maintenance and revitalization · Language planning and policy · Language teaching and learning, including specific languages and TESOL · Pragmatics · Research design and methodology · Second language acquisition · Sociolinguistics · Language and technology · Translating and interpreting.