Talk at Anglia Ruskin University

I will be speaking about my research at ARU in a couple of weeks. Booking is essential to get the link!

AHSS Research Seminars
27 October 2021, 12:00-13:00
Researching Language and Religion in Different Contexts
Stephen Pihlaja

Religious faith and identity is often treated as a single, stable category. However, interaction between religious believers and people both in their own community and those who don’t share the same religious beliefs reveals that religious identity is more complex and beliefs can be articulated in different ways depending on the context. This presentation will focus on how discourse analysis can be used to track and trace positioning around religious belief and how constituent parts of religious belief shifts depending on the people interacting. The effects of social media and other mediated contexts on the presentation of belief will also be explored, with a focus on how linguistic methods can be used to understand the emergence of religious identities in interaction.