Ideology, language and culture in religion: A single domain ethnographic study of language maintenance

Abstract

Language maintenance investigations have, for the most part, been limited to the study of the effect that socio-cultural factors have on language preservation. Unfortunately, language maintenance has been studied in tandem with language shift. Language shift has generated more interested from scholars than has language maintenance. This dissertation is an attempt to open up new ways to look at the study of language maintenance by presenting a theoretical framework whereby the domain of language use is the principal focus of study. I studied the domain of religion, subdivided into several dimensions. One dimension, that of ideology, is at the center of my study. The main objective of the dissertation was to identify ideological themes within the doctrinal body of the church selected for the study. Twenty-five such themes were identified and analyzed to determine the ways in which the themes influence language maintenance among the church members. The case study approach and the use of several ethnographic data collection methods were employed to assist us in having a better understanding of the phenomenon of language maintenance and to pave the way for future language maintenance studies.