Language and religious identities

The 21st century has seen the start of the systematic development of ‘language and religion’ as a subfield of sociolinguistics (Darquennes and Vandenbussche 2011). Studies in this subfield have pointed to two fundamental issues: firstly, the importance of language for the maintenance of religion and religious practices and, vice-versa, the importance of religious practices for the maintenance of language and, secondly, the role of language and religion as markers of identity (Mukherjee 2013). This chapter presents a general view of both these issues, with particular consideration of language and religious identities within the field of applied linguistics