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Article published In:
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:1 (2012) ► pp.94–112

Language, faith and identity

A historical insight into discourses of language ideology and planning by the Lutheran Church of Australia

| University of New South Wales

While most language-planning and policy (LPP) studies have focussed on language decisions made by government bodies, in recent years there has been an increased interest in micro-level language planning in immigrant contexts. Few studies, however, have used this framework to retrospectively examine the planning decisions of religious institutions, such as “ethnic” churches. This paper explores the language decisions made by the Lutheran church in Australia between 1838 and 1921. The study is based on archival research carried out in the Lutheran Archives in Adelaide, South Australia. The paper draws attention to the complex interrelationships between language, religion and identity in an immigrant context.

Keywords: language maintenance and shift, language ideology, language and religion, German Australians, German as an immigrant language, Lutherans, language planning
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 1 January 2012
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.35.1.05hat
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