The Oxford Handbook of Ritual Language: (Oxford Handbooks)

This volume brings together representative case studies and surveys that explore research into ritual language, covering theoretical and methodological approaches that reflect traditional inquiries and more recent studies. This recent literature contends that ritual language hinges on the construction of authoritative ontological models about the cosmos and its inhabitants. Ritual speech also orchestrates performances that articulate representations of collective identities, and rests on the diversity of hierarchical forms of authoritative knowledge, displayed in both oblique and direct terms. Moreover, performances, texts, and narratives associated with ritual practices are closely entwined with historical accounts that navigate current memories, recast in a diversity of ways, about ancestral beings and distant or recent pasts, or delimit a terrain in which dialectical relationships with colonial hegemony and Christian indoctrination emerge to transform the social order. Ritual narrative often offers in its structure and delivery momentous representation of the social order, social institutions, social difference, and collective identities, and may also be constituted by claims about relations among species, non-human actors, and material culture. The Oxford Handbook of Ritual Language addresses foundational questions regarding the scope, structuring, use, and consequences of ritual language. The chapters examine the relationship between speakers' consciousness and verbal ritual performances, and between ritual language, hegemony, collective authority, and the social world. As the study of ritual speech hinges on extensive analyses of linguistic choices and styles, the contributors draw on data from a wide range of language groups and societies in the Americas, the Middle East, the Pacific, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Ritual Language in History and Anthropology 1: David Tavárez: Language, ritual, and colonialism: A brief cultural history 2: David Tavárez: The anthropology of ritual language: Classic and contemporary approaches Part II. Rethinking Ritual Language in Method and Theory 3: Kristina Wirtz: The chronotopic and sonotopic work of ritual 4: Paul Christopher Johnson: The language of secrecy 5: Janet McIntosh: The ritual language of militarization 6: Timothy W. Knowlton: Language and ritual healing Part III. Ritual Language, Colonialism, and State Hegemony 7: Jennifer Scheper Hughes: Ritual language and sacred labor in Greater Mexico 8: Margaret Bender and Thomas N. Belt: Ritual speech and text in early Cherokee Christianity 9: Abdelmajid Hannoum: Colonial rule, modernity, and rituals of royal power in Morocco 10: Courtney Handman: Ritual, media, and the here-and-now of decolonization 11: Magnus Fiskesjö: Ritual language and forced confessions in China Part IV. Ritual Language, Cosmology, and Identity 12: Sergio Romero: Language, ritual, and political legitimation in colonial Guatemala 13: Paul Liffman: Indigenous territoriality and the mediation of space and scale in ritual language 14: Alexandre Surrallés: Affectivity and repetition in Amazonian ceremonial welcoming dialogues 15: Abelardo de la Cruz: Language, Nahua life-cycle rituals, and Indigenous identity 16: Bruce Mannheim: Places that talk--and listen: Southern Quechua Part V. Ritual Speech and the Arts of Sociability 17: Paul Manning: Drinking, talking, and ritual action 18: Sonia N. Das: Ritual language and police discretion 19: Nikolas Sweet: Ritual language in West Africa: Participation and performance 20: Sean O'Neill: Language, worldview, and rituals of daily social interaction Part VI. Ritual Language, Mediation, and Pluralism 21: Adam Harr: Scalar poetics in ritual language 22: Louis Römer: Rituals of mourning and the poetics of Papiamentu talk radio 23: Morgan Siewert: Ritualized learning and endangered languages 24: Nishaant Choksi: Embodied ritual performance and new writing systems

About the Author :
David Tavárez is Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College. His work focuses on language and history; Indigenous intellectuals; and Native Christianities. A former Guggenheim Fellow and the co-editor of Anthropological Linguistics, he is author, co-author, or editor of five books, including the award-winning Rethinking Zapotec Time(Texas, 2022) and The Invisible War(Stanford, 2011), along with more than sixty articles and chapters.