Exploring Linguistic Landscapes in the Sacred Spaces of a Shinto Shrine
Agenda
- How can the LL show us what a community finds sacred?
- How does the LL express sacredness and other shared values in a community?
- Who are these sacred spaces for?
LL in Sacred Spaces
Alsaif, R. A. S., & Starks, D. (2019). Medium and domains in the linguistic landscapes of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(1), 14–31. Coluzzi, P., & Kitade, R. (2015). The languages of places of worship in the Kuala Lumpur area: A study on the “religious” linguistic landscape in Malaysia. Linguistic Landscape. An International Journal, 1(3), 243–267. Esteron, J. J. (2021). English in the churchscape: Exploring a religious linguistic landscape in the Philippines. Discourse and Interaction, 14(2), 82–104. Inya, B. T. (2019). Linguistic landscape of religious signboards in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria: Culture, identity and globalisation. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 9(9), 1146. Perera, N. (2016). Tamil in the temples – Language and religious maintenance beyond the first generation. Multilingua, 35(5). Wafa, A., & Wijayanti, S. (2018). Signs of multilingualism at religious places in Surabaya: A linguistic landscape study. Proceedings of the International Conference on Language Phenomena in Multimodal Communication (KLUA 2018). Woldemariam, H., & Lanza, E. (2012). Religious wars in the linguistic landscape of an African capital. In C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens, & C. Bagna (Eds.), Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change (pp. 169–184). Peter Lang. Yusuf, K., & Putrie, Y. E. (2022). The linguistic landscape of mosques in Indonesia: Materiality and identity representation. International Journal of Society Culture and Language, Online First.
|————————-|————–|—————————————————–|——————————————————| | Coluzzi & Kitade (2015) | Kuala Lumpur | Mosque, Theravada Buddhist | Malay is minimal (except Islam), | | | | temple, Anglican & Catholic Christian | English is a “neutral” language |
| church, Chinese temple, Hindu temple, Sikh gurdwara | Other languages only used to highlight ethnicities | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Esteron (2021) | Manaoag, | Catholic church | English is the dominant language; |
| Pangasinan, | Filipino secondary, and Pangasinan is minimally used | ||
| Philippines | |||
| ————————- | ————– | —————————————————– | —————————————————— |
| Alsaif & Starks (2021) | Mecca, | Grand Mosque | Arabic: sacred domains; |
| Saudi Arabia | English, Urdu, Farsi, etc. for banal domains | ||
| ————————- | ————– | —————————————————– | —————————————————— |
| Inya (2019) | Ado Ekiti, | Christianity, Islam, and | Christianity: English; Islam: English, |
| Nigeria | African Traditional Religion (ATR) | Arabic; ATR: Yoruba (English) | |
| ————————- | ————– | —————————————————– | —————————————————— |
Sacred LL studies in Japan
- Hiramatsu (2021): Nikko, home to Shrines and Temples of Nikk_ UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as National Treasures of Japan and Important Cultural Properties
- Doering (2021): development of an ancient pilgrimage route, the preference for and tensions with lower-impact, independent Western tourists in rural Wakayama
Religion in Japan
Population of Japan: 125.1 million 神道系 仏教系 キリスト教系 諸教 小計 ————– ————– ————– ————- ————— 83,964,368人 70,759,447人 1,262,924人 7,004,560人 162,991,299人 ————– ————– ————– ————- —————
IRL in Language/Culture Learning
Shinto
- 神道 Shintō: “the way of the gods”
- “a folk belief emerging from natural spiritual behavior, for which reason it has no creeds nor scriptures” (Melikian, 2001)
- indigenous religion of Japan: origins in prehistory, no founder, tightly wound with Japanese people, imperial family, history, and customs.
- Venerates 神 kami or divine spirits: cycles of nature, thunder, wind, rocks, trees, some animals, ancestral spirits, guardian spirits, national heroes.
神社 jinja Shinto Shrines
- ~100,000 shrines in Japan.
- “spontaneous manifestation of the people’s faith in the kami, and shrine rites and festivals are the highest expression of that faith” (Ono, 1962, p. 20)
- significant natural beauty: forest, boulder, waterfall, hilltop
- Prayer: to pass entrance exams, success in business, protection for a safe childbirth, prevention of automobile accidents, to avoid calamities during “unlucky” years.
- Celebration: New Year, first visit, weddings, matsuri