Rosowsky, A. (2018) Challenging the discursive positioning of young British Muslims through the multilingual performance of devotional song and poetry. International Journal of Multilingualism, 15 (4). pp. 412-434. ISSN 1479-0718
Abstract
This article presents data which challenge current hegemonic discourses in public and media spaces which reductively position young British Muslims as linguistically problematic. Framing these data are public space statements which argue for an overly simple linguistic basis to so-called extremist behaviour based on the presence or absence of the English language. Through an analysis of a questionnaire and interviews carried out with young performers, singers and reciters of devotional song and poetry in a range of language varieties, this article shows how such performance practices lead to the deployment of complex and mobile language resources which help negotiate and fashion rich linguistic repertoires and fluid identities for these young British Muslims. The article argues that these are (a) more representative of the wider British Muslim youth community, (b) unmarked, and thus generally invisible within public discourses and (c) a far cry from the prevailing discursive attempts to frame young Muslims as posing a linguistic problem.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | linguistic repertoire; religion; identity; devotional song and poetry; performance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Education (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 May 2017 09:52 |
Last Modified: | 03 Aug 2023 11:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14790718.2017.1329309 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:116774 |