Cover not available
Article published In:
Translingual practices entangled with semiotized space and time
Edited by Shaila Sultana and Dariush Izadi
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 45:2] 2022
► pp. 154–174

Doing penance as a nexus of practice

Linguistic and semiotic resources in the social practice of mourning ceremonies

| Western Sydney University

Funeral and mourning rites capture so many aspects of the Iranian traditional and religious rituals and provide members of society with cultural tools of lamenting the dead. The study presents socio-cultural considerations in connection with social space and action, linguistic interactions, and semiotic resources of rituals used in mourning ceremonies for Shiite Muslims in the city of Nur, Iran. The paper relies on a mediated discourse analysis approach as a theoretical framework from which to develop a semiotic analysis of the linguistic practices and mediational means that appear in the mourning events. To this end, I shall draw upon video and audio recorded interactions of mourning rituals personally collected at funerals. The paper demonstrates that while mourning rituals are culturally and religiously framed in Shiite Muslims, one must also include the social space, the discourse cycle, the trajectories of the material resource of individual’s historical bodies and of text.

Keywords: mourning rites, doing penance, nexus analysis, bereavement ceremonies, entextualization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Bereavement ceremonies in Iran
  • 3.Mourning ceremonies (rituals) as nexus analysis
  • 4.Site and data collection
    • 4.1Mediated actions
    • 4.2Mediational tools
  • 5.Doing penance as a mediated chronotopic action
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 16 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21034.iza
References
Agha, A.
(2007) Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Al Zidjaly, N.
(2019) Digital activism as nexus analysis: A sociolinguistic example from Arabic Twitter. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 221. [URL]
Bakhtin, M.
(1981) The dialogic imagination. University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J.
(2005) Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology, 441, 105–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019) Commentary: Chronotopes, synchronization and formats. Language & Communication, 70 1, 132–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, S.
(2017) The Routledge handbook of migration and language. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N.
(2010) Introduction: Sociolinguistics in the global era. In N. Coupland (Ed.), Handbook of language and globalization (pp. 1–27). Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Creese, A., & Blackledge, A.
(2019) Translanguaging and public service encounters: Language learning in the library. Modern Language Journal, 103 (4), 800–814. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dovchin, S., Pennycook, A., & Sultana, S.
(2018) Popular culture, voice and linguistic diversity: Young adults on- and offline. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durkheim, E.
(1915/1965) The elementary forms of the religious life. The Free Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, K.
(1998) Death, burial and bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, East London. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24 (3), 507–521. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, H.
(1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
(1988) Evidence for locally produced, naturally accountable phenomena of order, logic, reason, meaning, method, etc. in and as of the essential quiddity of immortal ordinary society (I of IV): An announcement of studies. Sociological theory, 6(1), 103–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goebel, Z., Cole, D., & Manns, H.
(2020) Theorizing the semiotic complexity of contact talk: Contact registers and scalar shifters. In Z. Goebel, D. Cole, & H. Manns (Eds.), Contact talk: The discursive organization of contact and boundaries (pp. 1–28). Routledge.Google Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1955) On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry, 18(3), 213–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1964) The neglected situation. American Anthropologist, 66 (6), 133–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1971) Relations in public. Basic Books.Google Scholar
(1974) Frame analysis: An essay on the organisation of experience. Harper and Row.Google Scholar
(1981) Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Good Delvecchio, M.-J., & Good, B. l.
(1988) Ritual, the state and the transformation of emotional discourse in Iranian society. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 121, 43–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heller, M., Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C.
(2014) Introduction: Sociolinguistics and tourism–mobilities, markets, multilingualism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18 (4), 425–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hester, S., & Francis, D.
(1994) Doing data: The local organization of a sociological interview. The British Journal of Sociology, 45 (4), 675–695. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hult, F.
(2017) Nexus analysis as scalar ethnography for educational linguistics. In M. Martine-Jones & D. Martin (Eds.), Researching multilingualism: Critical ethnography perspectives (pp. 89–104). Routledge.Google Scholar
Iedema, R.
(2003) Multimodality, resemiotisation: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication, 2 (1), 29–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Izadi, D.
(2017) Semiotic resources and mediational tools in Merrylands, Sydney, Australia: The case of Persian and Afghan shops. Social Semiotics, 27 (4), 495–512. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020) The spatial and temporal dimensions of interactions: A case study of an ethnic grocery shop. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacquemet, M.
(2005) Transidiomatic practices, language and power in the age of globalization. Language & Communication, 25(3), 257–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaworski, A.
(2014) Mobile language in mobile places. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18 (5), 524–533. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, R.
(2010) Cyberspace and physical space attention structures in computer-mediated communication. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space (pp. 151–167). Continuum.Google Scholar
Jones, R. H.
(2014) Mediated discourse analysis. In S. Norris & C. D. Maier (Eds.), Interactions, images and texts: A reader in multimodality (pp. 39–51). De Gruyter, Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Spoken discourse. Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Khosronejad, P.
(2015) Gageriveh, Bakhtiari women’s lamentations: Between self-suffering and tribal identity. In P. Khosronejad (Ed.), Women’s rituals and ceremonies in Shiite Iran and Muslim communities: Methodological and theoretical challenges (pp. 41–61). LIT Verlag Münster.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H.
(1974) The production of space. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Metcalf, P., & Huntington, R.
(Eds.) (1991) Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norris, S.
(2004) Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norris, S., & Jones, R. H.
(Eds.) (2005) Discourse in action: Introducing mediated discourse analysis. Routledge.Google Scholar
Parvaresh, V.
(2017) Panegyrists, vagueness and the pragmeme. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 61–81). Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, A.
(2010) Language as a local practice. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Procházka, O., & Blommaert, J.
(2021) Ergoic framing in New Right online groups: Q, the MAGA kid, and the deep state theory. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44 (1), 4–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosaldo, R.
(2005) Grief and a headhunter’s rage. In A. Robben (Ed.), Death, mourning, and burial: A cross-cultural reader (pp. 167–179). Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Scollon, R.
(2001a) Action and text: Towards an integrated understanding of the place of text in social (inter)action, mediated discourse analysis and the problem of social action. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 139–183). SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
(2001b) Mediated discourse: The nexus of practice. Routledge.Google Scholar
(2005) The discourses of food in the world system: Toward a nexus analysis of a world problem. Journal of Language and Politics, 4(3), 465–488. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Discourse itineraries: Nine processes of resemiotization. In V. K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew, & R. H. Jones (Eds.), Advances in discourse studies (pp. 233–244). Routledge.Google Scholar
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.
(2003) Discourses in place: Language in the material world. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W.
(2004) Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Serwe, S. K.
(2020) Investigating language use in immigrant businesses: Workplace practices of a Thai massage salon owner in Germany. In K. Goncalves & H. Kelly-Holmes (Eds.), Language, global mobilities, blue-collar workers and blue-collar workplaces (pp. 107–127). Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, M., & Urban, G.
(1996) Natural histories of discourse. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Soja, E. W.
(1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and- imagined places. Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Statistical Center of Iran (The Iranian Authority for General Department of Public Statistics and Statistical Center of Iran)
(2016) The Statistical Report of the Islamic Republic of Iran. [URL]
Tannen, D.
(2007) Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wertsch, J. V.
(1994) The primacy of mediated action in sociocultural studies. Mind, Culture and Activity, 1 (4), 202–208.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Sultana, Shaila
2022. Applied linguistics from the Global South: way forward to linguistic equality and social justice. Applied Linguistics Review 0:0 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 may 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.